10/31/13. REINCARNATION. 2/... - The Buddhist concept of reincarnation differs from others in that there is no eternal soul, spirit or self but only a stream of consciousness that links life with life. The actual process of change from one life to the next is called punarbhava (Sanskrit) or punabbhava (Pāli), literally becoming again, or more briefly bhava, becoming, and some English-speaking Buddhists prefer the term rebirth or re-becoming to render this term as they take reincarnation to imply a fixed entity that is reborn.[12] - Popular Jain cosmology and Buddhist cosmology as well as a number of schools of Hinduism posit rebirth in many worlds and in varied forms. In Buddhist tradition the process occurs across five or six realms of existence,[13] including the human, any kind of animal and several types of supernatural being. It is said in Tibetan Buddhism that it is very rare for a person to be reborn in the immediate next life as a human.[14] - Gilgul, Gilgul neshamot or Gilgulei Ha Neshamot (Heb. גלגול הנשמות) refers to the concept of reincarnation in Kabbalistic Judaism, found in much Yiddish literature among Ashkenazi Jews. Gilgul means cycle and neshamot is souls. The equivalent Arabic term is tanasukh:[15] the belief is found among Shia ghulat Muslim sects. History Origins - The origins of the notion of reincarnation are obscure. They apparently date to the Iron Age (around 1200 BCE).[citation needed] Discussion of the subject appears in the philosophical traditions of India (including the Indus Valley) and Greece (including Asia Minor) from about the 6th century BCE. Also during the Iron Age, the Greek Pre-Socratics discussed reincarnation, and the Celtic Druids are also reported to have taught a doctrine of reincarnation.[16] - The ideas associated with reincarnation may have arisen independently in different regions, or they might have spread as a result of cultural contact. Proponents of cultural transmission have looked for links between Iron Age Celtic, Greek and Vedic philosophy and religion,[17] some[who?] even suggesting that belief in reincarnation was present in Proto-Indo-European religion.[dubious – discuss][18] In ancient European, Iranian and Indian agricultural cultures, the life cycles of birth, death, and rebirth were recoginized as a replica of natural agricultural cycles.[19] Early Jainism, Hinduism and Buddhism; - Patrick Olivelle asserts that the origin of the concept of the cycle of birth and death, the concept of samsara, and the concept of liberation in the Indian tradition, were in part the creation of the non-Vedic Shramana tradition.[20] Another possibility are the prehistoric Dravidian traditions of South India.[21] Some scholars suggest that the idea is original to the Buddha.[22] - In Jainism, the soul and matter are considered eternal, uncreated and perpetual. There is a constant interplay between the two, resulting in bewildering cosmic manifestations in material, psychic and emotional spheres around us. This led to the theories of transmigration and rebirth. Changes but not total annihilation of spirit and matter is the basic postulate of Jain philosophy. The life as we know now, after death therefore moves on to another form of life based on the merits and demerits it accumulated in its current life. The path to becoming a supreme soul is to practice non-violence and be truthful.[23] - In Hinduisms Rigveda, the oldest extant Indo-Aryan text, numerous references are made to transmigration, rebirth (punarjanma), and redeath (punarmrtyu) in the Brahmanas.[24][25] One verse reads, Each death repeats the death of the primordial man (purusa), which was also the first sacrifice (RV 10:90).[26] Another excerpt from the Rig Veda states (Book 10 Part 02, Hymn XVI): - Burn him not up, nor quite consume him, Agni: let not his body or his skin be scattered. O Jatavedas, when thou hast matured him, then send him on his way unto the Fathers... let thy fierce flame, thy glowing splendour, burn him With thine auspicious forms, o Jatavedas, bear this man to the region of the pious... Again, O Agni, to the Fathers send him who, offered in thee, goes with our oblations. Wearing new life let him increase his offspring: let him rejoin a body, Jatavedas.[citation needed][27] - Indian discussion of reincarnation enters the historical record from about the 6th century BCE, with the development of the Advaita Vedanta tradition in the early Upanishads (around the middle of the first millennium BCE), Gautama Buddha (623-543 BCE)[28] as well as Mahavira, the 24th Tirthankara of Jainism.[29] - The systematic attempt to attain first-hand knowledge of past lives has been developed in various ways in different places. The early Buddhist texts discuss techniques for recalling previous births, predicated on the development of high levels of meditative concentration.[30] The later Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, which incorporated elements of Buddhist thought,[31] give similar instructions on how to attain the ability.[32]. - The Buddha reportedly warned that this experience can be misleading and should be interpreted with care.[33] Tibetan Buddhism has developed a unique science of death and rebirth, a good deal of which is set down in what is popularly known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Early Greece - Early Greek discussion of the concept likewise dates to the 6th century BCE. An early Greek thinker known to have considered rebirth is Pherecydes of Syros (fl. 540 BCE).[34] His younger contemporary Pythagoras (c. 570–c. 495 BCE[35]), its first famous exponent, instituted societies for its diffusion. Plato (428/427 –348/347 BCE) presented accounts of reincarnation in his works, particularly the Myth of Er. - Authorities have not agreed on how the notion arose in Greece: sometimes Pythagoras is said to have been Pherecydes pupil, sometimes to have introduced it with the doctrine of Orphism, a Thracian religion that was to be important in the diffusion of reincarnation, or else to have brought the teaching from India. In Phaedo, Plato makes his teacher Socrates, prior to his death, state: I am confident that there truly is such a thing as living again, and that the living spring from the dead. However Xenophon does not mention Socrates as believing in reincarnation and Plato may have systematised Socrates thought with concepts he took directly from Pythagoreanism or Orphism. - A 2nd-century Roman sarcophagus shows the mythology and symbolism of the Orphic and Dionysiac Mystery schools. Orpheus plays his lyre to the left. Classical Antiquity See also: metempsychosis - The Orphic religion, which taught reincarnation, first appeared in Thrace in north-eastern Greece and Bulgaria, about the 6th century BC, organized itself into mystery schools at Eleusis and elsewhere, and produced a copious literature.[36][37][38] Orpheus, its legendary founder, is said to have taught that the immortal soul aspires to freedom while the body holds it prisoner. The wheel of birth revolves, the soul alternates between freedom and captivity round the wide circle of necessity. Orpheus proclaimed the need of the grace of the gods, Dionysus in particular, and of self-purification until the soul has completed the spiral ascent of destiny to live for ever. - An association between Pythagorean philosophy and reincarnation was routinely accepted throughout antiquity. In the Republic Plato makes Socrates tell how Er, the son of Armenius, miraculously returned to life on the twelfth day after death and recounted the secrets of the other world. There are myths and theories to the same effect in other dialogues, in the Chariot allegory of the Phaedrus, in the Meno, Timaeus and Laws. The soul, once separated from the body, spends an indeterminate amount of time in formland (see The Allegory of the Cave in The Republic) and then assumes another body. - In later Greek literature the doctrine is mentioned in a fragment of Menander[39] and satirized by Lucian.[40] In Roman literature it is found as early as Ennius,[41] who, in a lost passage of his Annals, told how he had seen Homer in a dream, who had assured him that the same soul which had animated both the poets had once belonged to a peacock. Persius in his satires (vi. 9) laughs at this, it is referred to also by Lucretius[42] and Horace.[43]. - Virgil works the idea into his account of the Underworld in the sixth book of the Aeneid.[44] It persists down to the late classic thinkers, Plotinus and the other Neoplatonists. In the Hermetica, a Graeco-Egyptian series of writings on cosmology and spirituality attributed to Hermes Trismegistus/Thoth, the doctrine of reincarnation is central. - In Greco-Roman thought, the concept of metempsychosis disappeared with the rise of Early Christianity, reincarnation being incompatible with the Christian core doctrine of salvation of the faithful after death. It has been suggested that some of the early Church Fathers, especially Origen still entertained a belief in the possibility of reincarnation, but evidence is tenuous, and the writings of Origen as they have come down to us speak explicitly against it.[45]. - Some early Christian Gnostic sects professed reincarnation. The Sethians and followers of Valentinus believed in it.[46] The followers of Bardaisan of Mesopotamia, a sect of the 2nd century deemed heretical by the Catholic Church, drew upon Chaldean astrology, to which Bardaisans son Harmonius, educated in Athens, added Greek ideas including a sort of metempsychosis. Another such teacher was Basilides (132–? CE/AD), known to us through the criticisms of Irenaeus and the work of Clement of Alexandria. (see also Neoplatonism and Gnosticism and Buddhism and Gnosticism). - In the third Christian century Manichaeism spread both east and west from Babylonia, then within the Sassanid Empire, where its founder Mani lived about 216–276. Manichaean monasteries existed in Rome in 312 AD. Noting Manis early travels to the Kushan Empire and other Buddhist influences in Manichaeism, Richard Foltz[47] attributes Manis teaching of reincarnation to Buddhist influence. However the inter-relation of Manicheanism, Orphism, Gnosticism and neo-Platonism is far from clear. Continue...
Posted on: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 02:28:02 +0000
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