Inside Yoga 163 (28/3/2016)
In both Buddhism and yoga there is lot of importance placed on how we live, how we die and how we are reborn. Most of us are aware of the belief in reincarnation, that when a living being dies it is reborn, but what and where this new life will be is dictated by how we lived the previous life – and we are not always born again as humans, as it can be any living creature.
A hard belief to understand if you have been educated and brought up on other beliefs, such as Christianity, which place importance on the one life followed by heaven or hell. Although, early Christians debated and argued over the question of reincarnation, with questions posed by Origen in the 3rd century and continuing for centuries. Today research shows about 30 per cent of Christians believe in reincarnation.
According to Buddhism and yoga how we live the present life will affect what happens with the following life. This is basis of karma, which translates as action where every action has a resulting reaction. This reaction can be immediate, or delayed to days, months, years later or even the next life. This is why there are the over-used expressions of “such and such will be bad for my karma”, often misunderstood, but still used frequently.
The Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama offered the best explanation I have read on reincarnation for those who have doubt about rebirth existing.
He said that it is worth giving reincarnation the benefit of doubt. He reasoned: if you have doubts over reincarnation, give it the benefit of doubt, because if our next life depends on this life why not live a virtuous and altruistic life, because when we die, this is when we will find out the truth – is there reincarnation or not? If there is reincarnation, by living a good life we will be sent to a fortunate rebirth, and if there is no reincarnation, well, we did live a good life before dying. If we do nothing about living a good life and life a life filled with negative actions, and find on our death that there is reincarnation, it is too late to do anything about it and rectify our situation, and as a consequence we will be sent to a new life filed with suffering and so forth.
Sound reasoning for living a good and conscious life right now – and using the words “right now” is very important when we look at the belief in reincarnation from a different perspective. The Dalai Lama’s explanation is asking us to pay attention to how we live our present life, moment to moment, day to day, year to year. In fact, when both Buddhism and yoga’s teachings speak of future lives they are really asking us to pay attention to the present life, to consider that our one life is a series of reincarnations, that moment to moment we are reborn during our so-called one life.
Consider this: the very next second of your life is new – it has never happened before. In fact every second of our life is new, so based on this premise we enter a new life every second of our life! Metaphorical as it may seem, it is actually a fact that every new second of our life is new. This is a major point to make because being reborn implies a new start, a beginning and freshness. We spend much our life drifting forward on autopilot not really noticing very much, not really living every moment to its fullest, and wonder why we feel life is flying by or perhaps that we are not really enjoying our life.
Freshness and newness implies a waking up, a new life, a feeling of being alive to the experience in front of us, and appreciating every detail of our life, however mundane this might feel it is what makes us live a full life. Being reborn is not just the preserve of born-again Christians as this is not about finding a religion (for the first time or second time) but about being reborn into our own life and living it well and with appreciation – moment to moment.
You could say that if every moment in our life is new, we are living at the edge of our own life.
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