We are presenting here an important article sent us by Dr Simon Child. Based in his personal practice of meditation it clarifies a way of looking at the Buddhist concept of rebirth which is often a stumbling block for many a Westerner. In conversation, Shifu once commented that for a Buddhist the idea of rebirth might be taken as myth but that to be a Buddhist, a concern with the continuity of time was essential. Without such concern why should we wish to develop Bodhicitta and take the Bodhisattva vow? Simon's article is a valuable meditation on this theme which we believe will be helpful to many. (Eds)
Rebirth and Karma - a Meditational Viewpoint
To Westerners one of the most troublesome traditional Buddhist doctrines is that of rebirth and karma. Rebirth, in particular, does not belong to our cultural set of ideas and karma does not make much sense without a notion of rebirth. We can, of course, rationalise a way around this, for example by considering rebirth and karma as applying only to moment to moment recurrence in this life only, or perhaps we could follow the Buddha's advice expressed by Roshi Jiyu Kennett as putting it on the "back burner" and reserve judgement - an agnostic view. Yet there is another way: to penetrate the issue through meditational practice and thus gain insight into the whole matter.
Unless we come to a clearer understanding of rebirth and karma we are cut off from an important part of Buddhist teaching. We are faced here essentially by a paradoxical question, a koan, a rationally unprovable notion which yet has the weight of tradition behind it. Surprisingly, I have come to a resolution which does not contradict tradition and yet makes sense to my Western perspective, albeit within the Chan practice of meditation. In this article I hope I can offer a viewpoint that makes karma and rebirth more acceptable to a Westerner without asking for acceptance of what may appear to be superstition. Even so, if we are to share an understanding, a common background of practice is important. This is because the whole nature of meditational insight is such that it cannot be adequately explained in everyday terms yet becomes quite acceptable within its own context. I offer this then in the spirit of the Buddha - for consideration on the back burner until it seems right for you.
In meditational experience the perception of time and space can change in such a way that our consciousness comes to embrace everything and, as time collapses into the continuous present of the Eternal, we become one with all beings of the three times. At such a moment we already exist in the past, present and future so that rebirth loses its mystique and karma is understandable. Coming back out of meditation, from this nirvanic unity, we are reborn into the suffering world with a very different perspective.
But what can be meant by rebirth if, as the Buddha clearly stated, there is no individual self? Surely rebirth implies a continuation of the self, perhaps for ever. We may come to the idea that karma means that our actions in present moments have effects in future moments in this life. Rebirth is then moment to moment. This is certainly so but it is not the whole story. We are avoiding here the question of the effects of our actions in the future after our deaths. It implies we do not regard the time after our death as important or perhaps not as a rebirth of ourselves but merely as our future influence on others. But here there is a danger of philosophical argument rather than a direct understanding of the Ultimate. Actually if there is no rebirth how can what happens in the future be of any concern to us?
Practitioners discover in meditation that there can be an experience of oneness, of loss of self, of immersion in what is and a cessation of the feeling of separation - and that all of these are aspects and differing depths of the same experience. Regular meditators may experience a calming of the mind in which there can be an opening of awareness to one's surroundings through a release from the constant inward chatter which distracts us. This is very different from the outward awareness concerned with protecting one's own interests and ambitions. We have here an uncontrolled awareness which is simply open. It can be a fleeting glimpse or a steady state in which one comes to be more frequently or even continuously open. At this stage there is still a sense of self which is aware and so a division between self and the objects of awareness is sustained.
A further stage can be described in which through sensing one's surroundings one seems to expand until one contains or reaches out to the whole room. Considering this state, a question arises: What is the difference between the thoughts that pass through your awareness and the sounds and visual impressions entering consciousness, such as a person walking through the room for example? All these events come to have a similar status in consciousness. Are people walking through me? If my awareness of their walking through the room is no different from my awareness of a thought passing through my mind, it seems they are indeed doing so.
As we become accustomed to such altered states of awareness we do not resist them but begin to see the possibility of accepting other's activities and concerns as part of our own life flow. How can I reject them if they are occurring to me in the same way and with the same sort of status in my consciousness as my own thoughts and interests?
When wandering thoughts and the sense of a separate self return we feel cut off from this expansion of our mental horizons. We feel a loss of something and so continue to practise. Yet it is not that we have lost something. It is that we have regained a sense of self after its absence and this "selfishness" cuts us off from others. Practice helps me to lose this sense of self and to regain contact with the world.
Such an expanded consciousness can go beyond one's immediate surroundings and go on enlarging until it seems to have no bounds. I am not talking here of telepathy or supernatural phenomena but a sense of limitlessness to one's expanding awareness. When it becomes limitless and infinite what is the difference between saying that I do not exist as a separate self and saying that I have become everything?
If I contain everything then there is nothing other than me and so there is no difference between regarding everything as self and sensing there is no self other than everything. Whichever way you look at it, it comes to the same thing. No separate self. Thus Matsu could at one time teach that Buddha is Mind-only and later that Buddha is No-mind. The opposites merge and there is only a continuum.
What I am writing about here is Emptiness and no amount of describing or reading can bring one to the same understanding as directly experiencing it for oneself. But I hope I have made clear how an appreciation of Emptiness leads to a sense of concern for all beings. It is from this position that the feeling of the importance of one's actions towards others arises. There is a sort of "selfishness" in which one finds that there is a felt sense in which others are in fact oneself. The Bodhisattva vow to deliver all sentient beings is not an external imposition but a sort of selfishness on a grand scale.
How can one feel a connection between oneself now and some other person, another me, in the future? The answer for me is in the experience, simultaneously with the above, of another well described meditational experience, that of insight into the nature of time.
When the mind is calm in meditation not only does one's awareness of surroundings expand but the awareness of time contracts. As I am not thinking about past and future events, they do not exist for me at that moment. I am only aware of what is now. Indeed it is precisely the cutting off of memories and fantasies of past and future which allows one to experience that which is real now - the immediate environment.
This enhanced sense of Now leads to a lessening of the sense of past and future and ultimately to the merging of all time into a continuous present. This must be experienced for oneself but perhaps these words can convey how time can be felt as a continuous unbroken flow, past and future being extensions of the now just as the centre of a piece of string is not separate from the rest of the string.
When past and future fuse into a continuous Now, there is the sense that all time is present now, just as there is no doubt at all that all space is present now. Even though one is only at one particular point in space one does not doubt that all dimensions of space exist in the now. Time is like another dimension of space. If the now is continuous how could past and future not in some sense already exist? If they were yet to be created, or had already perished there would not be a sense of continuity but a sequence of discrete moments and the possibility of noticing gaps or joins between these moments. Yet in experience the flow is perfect. Dogen talks about this view of time in his famous sermon "Uji", his essay on Being-Time. At the moment of his Enlightenment the Buddha said "I was, am and shall be, enlightened simultaneously with the Universe".
When all of space is oneself and all of time is present now and everything in all time in that space matters to you, suddenly it is clear that all past and future lives are in a real sense one's own lives and one's actions affect not only one's present life but also all of one's future lives. The futility of complaining about one's present karma becomes clear - there is no-one to blame for it other than oneself. It must be accepted as part of the flow of life, just as one must take responsibility for the results in the future of one's present actions. There is no-one else to blame and whilst this may seem cold comfort, just consider the freedom it opens up when it is fully accepted-liberation is in ones hands right this minute - now.
How could love and compassion not automatically arise when one senses this unity with all beings in space and time throughout eternity? How could there be any fear when there is no separate self to be threatened and the knowledge that whatever happens in one's Self has already happened before and will happen again in beginningless endless time? Simultaneously nothing matters - for there is no self to whom it could matter - and so there are no hindrances - yet everything matters - one is in direct confluity with everything - and so one takes the opportunity to do whatever one can unfettered by personal concerns and unconcerned because one cannot do everything because nothing matters anyway! How can there not be great joy when one is open uncomplainingly to all the delights of the Universe and, whilst feeling compassion towards all suffering beings, there is no fear of any ill befalling oneself!
Returning from meditation one re-enters the conventional world where there is self and other. This is the rebirth into Samsara. But now, knowing the illusory nature of self and the relativity of suffering, one may have a different perspective. One practices not to get away from suffering and back into Nirvana but because one sees how greed, hatred and ignorance cause suffering in the wider world which is Self. Not to practise is to cause more suffering.
Rather than clinging to Nirvana and returning unwillingly to the world the Bodhisattva comes back willingly because there is work to be done. There is no regret at leaving Nirvana because after all it is only a point of view. The world-self is as it is wherever he/she happens to be.
This then is my meditational understanding of rebirth which I feel is both consistent with tradition yet needs no superstitions for Westerners to accept. Although I have no self to be reborn literally, I have a personal interest in events after my death without needing to postulate a soul or reincarnation.
This view requires a basis in meditational practice which accepts the insights of all time being present in the now and of self giving way to selflessness to such an extent that there is no self and so everything is Self. Today, with our expanding knowledge of the cosmos and of the basis of matter, when the big and the small seem increasingly the same, Westerners may not find such concepts difficult to accept although not so easy to experience. They point to an understanding of rebirth and karma which is not threatening to rationality and which encourages meditative realisation. Yes, there are paradoxes here - but then Chan is well known for that!
