You will find short stories on this site. Most are autobiographical. Some are fiction.

REINCARNATIONS.

My friend Motoko, born and raised in Japan, and like millions of other Buddhists, believes that upon her death, she will be reincarnated into another human or some other animal. The Tibetan book of the dead describes how a person’s soul leaves her body upon death in search of a newborn human to occupy.

Do you believe in Reincarnation?

I do, only my concept of reincarnation is very different from these. With every thing that leaves my body every day of my life, my bodily waste, even my breath, it all contributes in some way, to other life. My body, when I die, will also contribute to new life, but to a lesser extent. The same goes for your body and the body of everything that lives or for that matter, everything which has lived, all of it is part of this reincarnating cycle of life. The concept is well accepted but the use of the word reincarnation is not usually used in this context.

Furthermore, looking back, I am the product of similar reincarnations. I am composed of detritus of current and prior lives. Lives of plants and creatures that lived before were similarly composed of the remains of prior life, and so it goes in an intricate chain of prior life and loss, on this earth back over the millions of years since life first emerged, and yet still further back. Our lives depend on reincarnation which existed prior to life on this planet because suns and planets of our solar system are all reincarnated from the remains of earlier stars.

Beyond the material aspects of reincarnation, there is the contribution of actions taken and even thoughts expressed, all are aspects of reincarnation. The energy I am given by eating plant and animal tissue of prior lives, when used to plant a tree, especially a fruit tree, or any plant, is a form of the reincarnation of those vegetables and the chicken I had eaten the day before. This extends not just to planting, but to all productive acts.

Consider that in speaking and writing, we introduce an idea to someone else. The rejuvenation of the life of an idea planted to grow in another person’s mind, is an example of conceptual reincarnation.

I can’t miss mentioning the most direct form of reincarnation, which is that of conceiving and raising a child.

Reincarnation is, in these ways, a fact of life, all aspects of it. This is not a new idea. It is symbolized by the ancient Hindu God Shiva, the god of destruction and creation. Which is, in turn, a reflection of a truth known by our species over the eons. The death of one thing, physical or ethereal, leads to the creation of something new.

Do I hear a protest. A Buddhist says “This is not reincarnation because it does not involve the transmigration of the soul of the deceased, to a living being.”

What I have described above is about the transfer of real things and thoughts to another living being. The question is whether the soul is a real thing or a thought, a belief. If it is argued that the soul is a real thing, I would ask for evidence of it’s existence. Does it have mas? Can it be seen? Can it be sensed in any way other than through the imagination and belief?

No? Would you agree then that the soul is a belief? If so, I agree soul is a religious belief. As such it too is a reincarnation, a form of belief associated with ones spiritual beliefs learned from the teaching of religioius doctrine. Therefore, in the context of this interpretation, the soul is, like any other learned concept, a product of conceptual reincarnation.

There is capacity, in the human mind for many beliefs. These beliefs are, like everything else, products of reincarnation whether it incorporates chemical components of life or mental images of life, which includes beliefs in concepts of an after life. All of these are the product of reincarnation.

The only thing, I can think of, which could possibly be considered to exist without first having been something else, are the primotial gases, electrons, ions, nutrinos, and other nuclear particles, left in space after the initiating event of this universe. Even these could be considered recarnations of what it was that existed before the “big bang.”