The doctrine of rebirth, which Buddhists regard not as a mere theory but as an evidentially verifiable fact, forms a fundamental tenet of Buddhism, though its summum bonum is attainable in this life its life. The Bodhisatta ideal and the correlative doctrine of freedom to attain utter perfection are based on this doctrine of rebirth.
Documents record that this belief in rebirth, viewed as transmigration or reincarnation, was accepted by some spiritual teachers like Christ, philosophers like Pythagoras and Plato, poets like Shelly, Tennyson and Wordsworth, and many ordinary men in the West as well as in the East.
The Buddhist doctrine of rebirth should however be differentiated from the transmigration and reincarnation of other systems, because Buddhism denies the existence of transmigrating permanent soul, created by God, or emanating from a Paramatma.
It is Kamma that conditions rebirth. Past Kamma conditions the present birth; and present Kamma, in combination with past Kamma, conditions the future. The present is the offspring of the past, and becomes, in turn, the present of the future.
The actuality of the present needs no proof as it is self-evident. That of the past is based on memory and report, and that of the future on fore-thought and inference.
If we postulate a past, present and a future life, then we are at once faced with the alleged mysterious problem - 'What is the ultimate origin of life?'
One school, in attempting to solve the problem, posits a first cause, whether as cosmic force or as an Almighty Being. Another school denies a first cause for, in common experience, the cause over becomes the effect and the effect becomes the cause. In a circle of cause and effect a first cause is inconceivable. According to the former, life has a beginning; whilst according to the latter it is beginningless. In the opinion of some conception of a first cause is as ridiculous as a round triangle.
Modern science endeavours to tackle the problem with its limited systematized knowledge. According to the scientific point of view, we are the direct products of the sperm and ovum cells provided by our parents. But science does not give a satisfactory explanation with regard to the development of the mind, which is infinitely more important than the machinery of man's material body. Scientists whilst asserting 'omne vivum ex vivo' - 'all life from life,' maintain that mind and life evolved from the lifeless.
Some religions systems assert that soul, an averred essence of man, springs from God; parents only provide the gross garments for a soul.
Now, from the scientific point of view, we are absolutely parent-born. As such, life protoplasm life. With regard to the origin of the first protoplasm of life, or 'colloid' (whichever we please to call it), scientists plead ignorance.
According to Buddhism, we are born from the matrix of action (kammayoni). Parents merely provide us with a material layer. As such, being precedes being. At the moment of conception, it is Kamma that conditions the initial consciousness that vitalized the foetus. It is invisible Kammic energy, generated from the past birth, that produces mental phenomena and the phenomenon life in an already extant physical phenomenon, to complete the trio that constitutes man.
Dealing with the conception of beings, the Buddha states:
"Where there are found in combination, then a germ of life is planted. If mother and father come together, but it is not the mother's period, and the 'being-to-be-born' (gandhabba) is not present, then no germ of life is planted. If mother and father come together, and it is the mother's period, but the 'being-to be-born' is not present then again no germ of life is planted. If mother and father come together, and, it is the mother's period, and the 'being-to-be-born' is also present, then, by the conjunction of these three, a germ of life is there planted."
Here Gandhabba (=gantabba) does not mean "a class of devas said to preside over the processes of conception," but refers to a suitable being ready to be born in that particular womb. This term is used only in this particular connection, and must not be mistaken for a permanent soul.
For a being to be born here a being must die somewhere. The birth of a being, - which is strictly means the arising of the Aggregates (khandhanam patubhavo), or psycho-physical phenomena in this present life, - corresponds to the death of a being in a past life; just as, in conventional terms, the rising of the sun in another place. This enigmatic statement may be better understood by imagining life as a wave and not a straight line. Birth and death are only two phases of the same process. Birth precedes death, and death, on the other hand, precedes birth. This constant succession of birth and death in connection with each individual life-flux constitutes what is technically known as Samsara, - recurrent wandering.
What is the Ultimate Origin of Life?
The Buddha positively declares:
"Without congnizable end is this Samsara. A first beginning of beings who, obstructed by ignorance and fettered by craving, wander and fare on, is not to be perceived."
This life-stream flows ad infinitum, as long as it is fed by the muddy waters of ignorance and craving. When these two are completely cut off, then only does the life-stream cease to flow; rebirth ends, as in the case of Buddha and Arahats. The ultimate beginning of this life-stream cannot be determined, as a stage cannot be perceived when this life force was not fraught with ignorance and craving.
The Buddha has here referred merely to the beginning of the life-stream of living beings. It is left to scientists to speculate as to the origin and the evolution of the universe. The Buddha does not attempt to solve all the ethical and philosophical and theorizing that tend neither to edification nor to enlightenment. Nor does He demand blind faith from His adherents anent a First Cause. He is chiefly concerned with the problem of suffering and its destruction. With but this practical and specific purpose in view, all irrelevant side issued are completely ignored.
How are we to believe in rebirth?
The Buddha is our greatest authority on rebirth.
On the very night of His Enlightenment, during the first watch, the Buddha developed retrocognitive knowledge which enable Him to read His past lives.
"I recalled, "He declares, "my varied lot in former existences as follows: first one life, the two lives, then three, four, five, ten twenty to fifty lives; then a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand, and so forth."
During the second watch the Buddha, with clairvoyant vision, perceived beings disappearing from one state of existence and reappearing in another. He beheld "the base and noble, the beautiful and ugly, the happy and miserable passing according to their deeds," etc.
There are the very first utterances of the Buddha regarding the question of rebirth. These textual references conclusively prove that the Buddha did not borrow this stern truth of rebirth from any pre-existing source, but spoke from personal knowledge - a knowledge which was supernormal, developed by Himself, and which could be developed by others as well.
In His first paean of joy (udana), the Buddha says,
"Through many a birth (anekajati) wandered I seeking the builder of this house. Sorrowful indeed is birth again and again (dukkha jati punappunam)."
In the Dhammacakka Sutta, His very first discourse, the Buddha, commenting on the Second Noble Truth, states Y'ayam tanha ponobhavika - "this very craving which leads to rebbirth" And the Buddha concludes that discourse with the words - "Ayam antima jati natthi dani punabbhavo" - "This is my last rebirth. Now there is no more rebirth."
The Majjhima Nikaya relates that when the Buddha, out of compassion for beings, surveyed the world with His Buddha-vision, before He decided to teach the Dhamma, He perceived beings who realized the fault and fears affecting a future life (paralokavajjabhayadassavino).
In several discourses the Buddha clearly states that beings, having done evil, are, after death parammarana born in woeful states; and beings, having done good, are born in blissful states.
Besides the most interesting Jataka stories, which deal with His previous lives and which are of psychological importance - Majjhima Nikaya and Anguttara Nikaya make incidental reference to some of the past lives of the Buddha.
In the Ghatikara Sutta the Buddha relates to the venerable Ananda that He was born as Jotipala, in the time of the Buddha Kassapa, His immediate predecessor The Anathapindikavada Sutta describes a nocturnal visit of Anathapindika to the Buddha, immediately after his rebirth as a Deva. In the Anguttara Nikaya, the Buddha alludes to a past birth of His as Pacetana the wheel right.
An unusual direct reference to departed ones appears in the Parinibbana Sutta. The venerable Ananda desired to know the Buddha the future state of several persons who had died in the village. The Buddha patiently described their destinies.
Such instances could easily be multiplied from the Tipitaka to show that the Buddha did expound the doctrine of rebirth as a verifiable truth.
Following the Buddha's instructions, His disciples also developed this retrocognitive knowledge and were able to read a limited, though vast, number of their past lives. The Buddha's power in this direction was limitless.
Some Indian Rishis too, prior to the advent of the Buddha, were distinguished for such supernormal powers as clairaudience, clairvoyance, telepathy and so forth.
Although science takes no cognizance of these supernormal faculties, yet, according to Buddhism, men with highly developed mental concentration, could cultivate these psychic powers and read their past just as one would recall a past incident of one's present life. With their aid, independent of the five senses, direct communication of thought and direct perception of other worlds are made possible.
There also are some extraordinary persons, especially children who, according to the laws of association, spontaneously develop the memory of their past birth and remember fragments of their previous lives. A single such well-attested respectable case is in itself sufficient evidence for a discerning student to believe in a past birth. "Pythagoras is said to have distinctly remembered a shield in a Grecian temple as having been carried by him in a previous incarnation at the siege of Troy. Somehow of other these wonderful children lose that memory later, as is the case with many infant prodigies.
Experiences of some reliable modern psychists, ghostly phenomena, spirit communication, strange alternating and multiple personalities and so forth shed some light upon this problem of rebirth.
The phenomenon of secondary personalities has to be explained either as remnants of past individual experiences or as "possession". The former explanation appears more reasonable, but the latter cannot totally be rejected.
How often do we meet persons whom we have never before met, and instinctively feel that they are familiar to us? How often do we visit places and instinctively feel impressed that we are perfectly acquainted with those surroundings?
There arise in this world highly developed personalities and Perfect Ones like the Buddhas. Could they evolve suddenly? Could they be the products of a single existence?
How are we to account for colossal characters like Homer and Plato, men of genius like Shakespeare, infant prodigies like Pascal, Mozart, Beethoven and so forth?
Infant prodigies seem to be a problem for scientists. Some medical men are of opinion that prodigies are the outcome of abnormal glands, especially the pituitary, the pineal and the adrenal gland. The extraordinary hypertrophy of glands of particular individuals may also be due to a past Kammic cause. But, how, by the mere hypertrophy of glands, one Christian Heinecken could talk within a few hours of his birth, repeat passages from the Bible at one, answer any question on Geography at two, speak French and Latin at three, and be a student of philosophy at four, how Stuart Mill could read Greek at three; Macaulay write a world history at six; William James Sidis, wonder child of the United States read and write at two, speak French, Russian, English, German with some Latin and Greek at eight, is incomprehensible to us non-scientists. Nor does science explain why glands should hypertrophy in just a few and not in all. The real problem remains unsolved.
Heredity alone cannot account for prodigies, - "else their ancestry would disclose iit; their posterity, in even greater degree than themselves, would demonstrate it."
Is it reasonable to believe that the present belief span of life is the only existence between two eternities of happiness and misery?
The few years we spend here, at most but five score years, must certainly be an inadequate preparation for eternity.
If one believes in the present and a future, it is logical to believe in a past.
If there be reason to believe that we have existed in the past, then surely there are no reasons to disbelieve that we shall continue to exist after our present life has apparently ceased.
It is indeed a strong argument in favour of past and future lives that "in this world virtuous are very often unfortunate and vicious persons prospers."
What do Kamma and Rebirth Explain?
1. They account for the problem of suffering for which we ourselves are responsible.
2. They explain the inequality of mankind.
3. They account for the arising of geniuses and infant prodigies.
4. They explain why individual twins who are physically alike enjoying equal privileges, exhibit totally different characteristics, mentally, intellectually and morally
5. They account for the dissimilarities amongst children of the same family, whilst heredity accounts for the similarities.
6. They account for the special abilities of men which are due to their prenatal tendencies.
7. They account for the moral and intellectual differences between parents and children.
8. They explain how infants spontaneously develop such passions as greed, anger and jealousy, etc.
9. They account for the instinctive likes and dislikes at first sight.
10. They explain how in us are found "a rubbish heap of evil and a treasure house of good."
11. They account for the unexpected outburst of passion in a highly civilised person, and for the sudden transformation of a criminal into a saint.
12. They explain how profligates are born to saintly parents and saintly children to profligates.
13. They explain how, in one sense, we are the result of what we are, we will be the result of what we are, - and in another sense, we are not absolutely what we were, and we shall not absolutely be what we are.
14. They explain the causes of untimely deaths and unexpected changes in fortune.
15. Above all they account for the arising of Omniscient, perfect spiritual teachers like the Buddhas, who possess incomparable physical mental, and intellectual characteristics which can be explained only by Kamma and a series of births.
The Process of Rebirth
How rebirth occurs has been fully explained by the Buddha in the Paticca Samuppada.
Paticca means "because of" or "dependent upon"; samuppada, "arising" or "origination." Paticca Samuppada literally means "dependent arising" or "dependent origination".
Paticca Samuppada is a discourse on the process of birth and death, and not a theory on the evolution of the world from primordial matter. It deals with the cause of rebirth and suffering. It does not in the least attempt to solve the riddle of an absolute origin of life.
Ignorance (avijja) of things as they truly are, is the first link, or the cause of the wheel of life. It clouds all right understanding.
Dependent on ignorance arise activities (sankhara), which include moral and immoral thoughts, words and deeds. Actions, whether good or bad, which are directly rooted in, or indirectly tainted with ignorance and which must necessarily produce their due effects, tend to prolong wandering in the ocean of life. Nevertheless good deeds free from delusion, hate and greed, are necessary to get rid of the ills of life. As such, the Buddha compares His Dhamma to a raft, whereby one crosses the ocean of life. The activities of Buddhas and Arahats are not treated as Sankhara, as they have eradicated ignorance.
Dependent on activities arises rebirth-consciousness (patisandhi vinnana). It is also called because it links the past with the present and is the initial consciousness one experiences at the moment of conception.
Simultaneously with the arising of the rebirth-consciousness, there occur mind and matter (nama-rupa).
The six senses, contact (phassa) sets in.
Contact leads to sensations or feelings (vedana).
Dependent on feeling arises craving (tanha), which conditions attachment (upadana).
Attachment produces Kamma (bhava) which in turn, produces future birth (jati).
Old age and death (jara-marana) are the inevitable results of birth.
If, on account of a cause, an effect arises; then, if the cause ceases, the effect also must cease.
The reverse order of the Paticca Samuppada will make the matter clear.
Old age and death are only possible in and with a corporeal organism, that is to say, a six-sense machine. Such an organism must be born therefore it presupposes birth. But birth is the inevitable result of past Kamma or action, which is conditioned by attachment due to craving. Such craving appears when sensation arises. Sensation is the outcome of contact between the senses and objects. Therefore it presupposes organs of sense which cannot exist without mind and body. Mind originates with a rebirth-consciousness due to ignorance of things as they truly are.
This process of birth and death continues ad infinitum. A beginning of this process cannot be determined as it is impossible to see a time when this life-flux was not encompassed by ignorance. But when his ignorance is replaced by wisdom and the life-flux realises the Nibbana Dhatu, then only does the rebirth process terminate.
Modes of Birth and Death
Briefly expounding the process of rebirth in such admittedly subtle technical terms, Buddhism assigns death to one of the four following causes: -
1. Exhaustion of the Reproductive Kammic energy (kamma khaya).
The Buddhist belief is that, as a rue, the thought, volition or desire, which is extremely strong during life-time, becomes predominant at the time of death and conditions the subsequent birth. In this last thought-moment is present a special potentiality. When the potential energy of this Reproductive Kamma is exhausted, the organic activities of the material from in which is corporealised the life-force, cease even before the end of the life-span in that particular plane. This often happens in the case of beings who are born in states of misery (apaya), but it can happen in other planes too.
2. The expiration of the life-term (ayukkhaya), which varies in different planes. Natural deaths due to old age, may be classed under this category.
3. The simultaneous exhaustion of the Reproductive Kammic energy and the expiration of the life-term (ubhayakkhaya).
4. The opposing action of a stronger Kamma that unexpectedly obstructs the flow of the Reproductive Kamma before the life-term expires. Sudden untimely deaths of children are due to this cause.
The first three are collectively called "timely death" (kalamarana) and the fourth is known as "untimely death" (akalamarana).
Explaining thus the cause of death, Buddhism speaks of four modes of birth - namely, egg-born beings (andaja), womb-born beings (jalabuja), moisture-born beings (samsedaja) and beings having spontaneous births (apapatika).
Such embryos that takes moisture as nidus for their growth, like certain lowly forms of animal life, belong to the third class. Being having a spontaneous birth are generally invisible to the physical eye. Conditioned by their past Kamma, they appear spontaneously, without passing though an embryonic stage. Petas and Devas normally and Brahmas belong to this class.
How Rebirth Takes Place
Suppose a person is about to die. This critical stage may be compared to the flickering of a lamp just before it is extinguished.
To this dying man is presented by a Kamma, a Kamma Nimitta, or Gati Nimitta.
By Kamma is here meant some good or bad action committed during his lifetime, or immediately before his dying moment. Kamma Nimitta, or symbol, means a mental reproduction of any sight, sound, smell, taste, touch or idea which dominated at the time of the commission of some salient activity, good or bad, - such as a vision of knives or dying animals, in the case of a butcher, patients, in the case of a kind physician: an object of worship, in the case of a devotee and so forth.
By Gati Nimitta, or "symbol of destiny" is a meant some sign of the place where he is to take rebirth. Such a symbol frequently presents itself to dying persons and stamps its gladness or gloom upon their features. When these indications of the future birth occur, and if they are bad, they might at times be remedied. This is done by influencing the thoughts of the dying man. Such premonitory visions of destiny may be fire, forests, mountainous regions, a mother's womb, celestial mansions, etc.
Death according to Buddhism is the cessation of the psycho-physical life of any one individual existence. It takes place by the passing away of vitality (ayu), i.e. psychic and physical life (jivitindriya), heat (usma) and consciousness (vinnana).
Death is not the complete annihilation of a being, for though the particular life-span ended, the force which hitherto actuated it is not destroyed.
Just as an electric light is the outward visible manifestations of invisible electric energy, even so we are the outward manifestations of invisible Kammic energy. The bulb may break, and the light may be extinguished, but the current remains and the light may be reproduced in another bulb. In the same way, the Kammic force remains undisturbed by the disintegration of the physical body, and the passing away of the present consciousness leads to the arising of a fresh one in another birth. But nothing unchangeable or permanent "passes" from the present to the future.
Just as the wheel rests on the ground only at one point even so, strictly speaking, we live only from one thought-moment. We are always in the present, and that present is ever slipping into the irrevocable past. Each momentary consciousness of this ever-changing life-process, on passing away, transmits its whole energy, all the indelibly recorded impressions, to its successor. Every fresh energy consciousness therefore consists of the potentialities of its predecessors and something more. At, death, the consciousness perishes, as truly is does every moment, only to give birth to another in a rebirth. This renewed consciousness inherits all the past experiences. As all impressions are indelibly recorded in the ever-changing palimpsest-like mind and as all potentialities are transmitted from life to life, irrespective of temporary physical disintegrations, reminiscence of past births or past incidents becomes a possibility. If memory depends solely on brain cells, it becomes an impossibility.
The continuity of the flux, at death, is unbroken in point of time, and there is no breach in the stream of consciousness. The only different between the passing of one thought to another in lifetime and of the dying thought-moment to the rebirth consciousness, is that in the latter case a marked perceptible physical death is patent to all.
Rebirth take place immediately, irrespective of he place of birth, just as an Electro-magnetic wave, projected into space, is immediately reproduced in a receiving radio set. Rebirth of the mental flux is also instantaneous and leaves no room whatever for any intermediate state (antarabhava). Pure Buddhism does not support the belief that a spirit of the deceased person takes lodgment in some temporary state until it finds a suitable place for its 'reincarnation.' According to Tibetan works, writes Dr. Evans Wentz, there is an intermediate state where beings remain for one, two, three, four, five, six and seven weeks, - until the forty-ninth day. This view is contrary to the teachings of Buddhism.
A question, might arise - are the sperm and ovum cells always ready, waiting to take up this rebirth thought?
According to Buddhism, living beings are infinite, and so are world systems. Nor is the impregnated ovum the only route to rebirth. Earth, an almost insignificant speck in the universe, is not the only habitable plane and human are not the only living beings. As such, it is not impossible to believe that there will always be an appropriate place to receive the last thought vibrations. A point is always ready to receive the falling stone.
What is it that is Reborn?
Apart from mind and matter, which constitute this so-called Buddhism does not assert the existence of an immortal soul, or an eternal ego, which man has obtained in a mysterious way from an equally mysterious source.
To justify the existence of endless felicity in an eternal heaven, and unending torment in n eternal hell, an immortal soul is absolutely necessary. Otherwise what is that sinned on earth and is punished in hell?
"It should be said," writes Bertrand Russel, "that the old distinction between soul and body has evaporated, quite as much because 'matter' has lost its solidity as because mind has lost its spirituality. Psychology is just beginning to be scientific. In the present state of psychology belief in immortality can be at any rate claim no support from science."
According to the learned author of "Riddle of the Universe" - "The theological proof - that a personal creator has breathed an immoral soul (generally regarded as a portion of the Divine Soul_ into man is a pure myth. The cosmological proof - that the 'moral order of the world' demands the eternal duration of the human soul - is a baseless dogma. The teleological proof - that the 'higher destiny' of man involves the perfecting of his defectives, earthly soul beyond the grave - rests on a false anthropism. The moral proof - that the defects and the unsatisfied desires of earthly existence must be fulfilled by 'compensative' justice on the other side of eternity - is nothing ore that a pious wish. The ethnological proof - that the belief of immorality, like the belief in God, is an innate truth, common to all humanity - is an error in fact. The ontological proof - that the soul, being a 'simple' immaterial and indivisible entity cannot be involved in the corruption of death - is based on an entirely erroneous view of the psychic phenomena: it is a spiritualistic fallacy. All these and similar 'proof of athanatism' are in a parlous condition: they are definitely annulled by the scientific criticism of the last few decades."
Hume in his search after a soul declares :
"There are some philosophers who imagine we are very moment intimately conscious of what we call our Self; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity …… For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular, perception or other of heat or cold, light or shed, love of hatred, pain and pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception and never can observe anything but the perception……"
Dealing with this question of soul, Prof. William James writes:
"…..This Me is an empirical aggregate of things objectively known. The I which knows them cannot itself to be an aggregate; neither for psychological purposes need it be an unchanging metaphysical entity like the Soul, or a principle like the transcendental Ego, viewed as 'out of time'. It is a thought, each moment different from that of the mast moment, but appropriative of the latter, together with all that the latter called its own…."
The Buddha propounded these facts some 2,500 years ago whilst He was sojourning in the valley of the Ganges.
Buddhism, teaching a psychology without a psyche, Rupa consists of forces and qualities which constantly spring from Kamma, mind (citta), physical change (utu), and food (ahara), and perish from moment to moment.
Mind, the more important part in the machinery of man consists of fifty-two fleeting mental states. Feeling or sensation (vedana) is one, perception (sanna) is another. The remaining fifty are collectively called volitional activities (samkhara). These psychic states arises in a consciousness (vinnana).
These four kinds of psychic phenomena, combined with the physical phenomena, form the five aggregates (pancak-khandha), the complex-compound termed a living being.
One's individuality is the combination of these five aggregates.
The whole process of these psycho-physical phenomena which are constantly becoming and passing away, is at times called in conventional terms, the self, or Atta, by the Buddha but it is a process, and not an identity that is thus termed.
Buddhism does not totally deny the existence of a personality in an empirical sense. It denies, in an ultimate sense, an identical being of a permanent entity, but it does not deny a continuity in process. The Buddhist philosophical term for an individual in santati, - that is, a flux or continuity. The unninterrupted flux of continuity of psycho-physical phenomena, conditioned by Kamma, having no perception source in the beginningless past nor an end to its continuation in the future, except by the Noble-Eightfold Path, is the Buddhist substitute for the permanent ego or eternal soul in other religious systems.
How is Rebirth Possible without a Soul to be Reborn?
Birth according to Buddhism, is the coming into being of the Khandhas, the aggregates or groups (khandhanam patubhavo).
Just as the arising of a physical state is conditioned by a preceding state as its cause, even so the appearance of this psycho-physical phenomenon is conditioned by causes anterior to its birth. The present process of becoming is the result of the craving for becoming in the previous birth, and the present instinctive craving conditions of life in a future birth.
As the process of one life-span is possible without a permanent entity of passing from one thought-moment to another, a series of life-processes is possible without anything to transmigrate from one life tot another.
The simile of the flame is very striking. Life is compared to a flame. Rebirth is the transmitting of this flame from one group to another. The flame of life is continuous although there is an apparent break at so-called death.
The body dies and its Kammic force is reborn in another. Thee is merely a continuity of a particular life-flux; just that and nothing more.
It is One who does the Act in this Birth and Another who reaps its result in the Other Birth?
To say that he who sows is absolutely the same as he reaps in one extreme, and to say that he who sows is totally different from he who reaps is the other extreme. Overcoming these extremes the Buddha teaches the middle doctrine in terms of cause and effect. "Neither the same nor another" (na ca so naca anno) states the venerable Buddhaghosa in the Visuddhi Magga. The evolution of the butterfly may be cited in illustration thereof.
Its initial stage was an egg. Then it turned into a caterpillar. Later it developed into a chrysalis and eventually into a butterfly. This process occurs in the course of one life-time. The butterfly is neither the same as, nor totally different from, the caterpillar. Here also there is a flux of life, or a continuity.
If there is No Soul, can there be any Moral Responsibility?
Yes, because there is a continuity, or identity in process, which is substituted for an identical personality.
A child, for instance, becomes a man. The latter is neither absolutely the same, - since the cells have undergone a complete change, nor totally different, - being the identical stream of life. Nevertheless the individual, as man, is responsible for whatever he done in his childhood. Whether the flux dies here and is reborn elsewhere, or continues to exist in the same life, the essential factor is this continuity.
Suppose a person was "A" in his last birth and is "B" in this. With the death of "A" the physical vehicle, the outward manifestation of Kammic energy, is relinquished and, with the birth of "B", a fresh physical vehicle arises. Despise the apparent material changes, the invisible stream of consciousness (citta santati) continues to flow, uninterrupted by death, carrying along with it all the impressions received from the tributary streams of sense. Conveniently speaking, must not "B" be responsible for the actions of "A" who was his predecessor? Some may object that there is no memory in this case, owing the intervening death.
Is Identity or Memory Absolutely Essential in Assessing Moral Responsibility?
If, for instance, a person was to commit a crime, and by sudden loss of memory he were to forget the incident, would he not be responsible for his act? His forgetfulness would not be exempt him from responsibility for the commission of that crime. To this, some may ask, - What is the use of punishing him, for he is not aware that he is being punished for that crime? Is there any justice here?
Of course not, if we are arbitrarily governed by a God who rewards and punishes us. But the Buddha does not talk of "punishements".
According to Buddhism the world is not so constituted. Buddhist believe in a just and rational law of Kamma that operates automatically and speak in terms of cause and effect instead of rewards and punishments.
In the words of the late Bhikkhu Silacara: "If a person does something in his sleep, gets out of bed and walks over the edge of the verandah, he will fall into the road below and in all likelihood break an arm or leg or something worse. But this will happen not at all as a punishment for sleep-walking, but merely as its result. And the fact that he did not remember going out on the verandah would not make the slightest difference to the result of his fall from it, the shape of broken bones. So the follower of the Buddha takes measures to see that he does not walk over verandahs or other dangerous places, asleep or awake, so as to avoid hurting himself or anybody who might be below and on whom he might fall.
The fact that a person does not remember his past is no hindrance to the intelligent understanding of the working of the Kammic law. It is the knowledge of the inevitability of the sequence of Kamma in the course of one's life in Samsara that more or less moulds the character of a Buddhist.
Is there any possibility for a Kammic Descent or, in other words, for a Man to be Born as an Animal?
The Buddhist answer may not be acceptable to all. But nobody is bound to accept anything on blind faith.
Buddhism does recognise the possibility of Kammic descent.
Material forms, - through which the life-continuum expresses itself, are merely temporary visible manifestations of the Kammic energy. The present physical body is not directly evolved from the past physical form, but is no doubt the successor of the past - being link with the same stream of Kammic energy.
Just as an electric current can successively manifest itself in the form of light, heat or motion - one not necessarily being evolved from the other - even so this Kammic energy may manifest itself in the form of a Deva, man, animal and so forth - one form having no physical connection with the order. It is one's Kamma that determines the nature of the material form, which varies according to the skill or unskilfulness of the actions performed. And this again depends entirely on the evolution of one's understanding of things as they truly are.
Instead of saying that man becomes an animal or vice versa - it would be more correct to say that the Kammic force which manifested in the form of man may manifest itself in the form of an animal.
On one occasion two ascetics, Punna and Seniya, who were practising ox-asceticism and dog-asceticism respectively, approached the Buddha and questioned Him as to their future destiny. The Buddha replied:
"In this world a certain individual cultivates thoroughly and constantly the practices, habits and manners of a dog. He having cultivated canine practices - upon the dissolution of the body, after death, is reborn amongst dogs."
In the same way the Buddha declared that he who observe ox-asceticism will, after death, be reborn amongst oxen.
This incident makes it clear how man can be reborn as animal, in accordance with the law of affinity.
According to Buddhism Kammic descent and Kammic ascent are both possible and at a bound.
Such is the intricate nature of this doctrine of Kamma and Rebirth.