Reason 8 of 10
Rebirth again and again? The Bible says once, then judgment and grace.
Buddhism teaches rebirth driven by kamma, yet denies any self that passes from life to life. The Bible says we live once, then face God, and that Jesus offers eternal life starting now.
Rebirth in the Pali discourses
The discourses describe an immense round of births and deaths, in which each of us has shed more tears than there is water in the oceans. Deeds decide the next birth: heavens, hells, the animal realm, the human realm.
But what is reborn? When the monk Sati said that the very same consciousness roams from life to life, the Buddha rebuked him: consciousness, he said, arises from conditions and is not a thing that travels. Buddhists describe rebirth with images such as one flame lighting another.
“Mendicants, this transmigration has no known beginning. No first point is found of sentient beings roaming and transmigrating, shrouded by ignorance and fettered by craving. What do you think? Which is more: the flow of tears you’ve shed while roaming and transmigrating for such a very long time—weeping and wailing from being coupled with the unloved and separated from the loved—or the water in the four oceans?” “As we understand the Buddha’s teaching, the flow of tears we’ve shed while roaming and transmigrating is more than the water in the four oceans.”
Samyutta Nikaya 15.3:1.2-1.5, Tears (tr. Bhikkhu Sujato) · context
Now at that time a mendicant named Sāti, the fisherman’s son, had the following harmful misconception: “As I understand the Buddha’s teaching, it is this very same consciousness that roams and transmigrates, not another.”
Majjhima Nikaya 38:2.1-2.2, The Longer Discourse on the Ending of Craving (tr. Bhikkhu Sujato) · context
“Sāti, what is that consciousness?” “Sir, he is the one who speaks, the one who knows, who experiences the results of good and bad deeds in all the different realms.” “Futile man, who on earth have you ever known me to teach in that way? Haven’t I said in many ways that consciousness is dependently originated, that without a cause, consciousness does not come to be? But still you misrepresent me by your wrong grasp, harm yourself, and brim with much wickedness.
Majjhima Nikaya 38:5.10-5.14, The Longer Discourse on the Ending of Craving (tr. Bhikkhu Sujato) · context
Why it does not hold together
If nothing passes from one life to the next, then the being who receives the fruit of my deeds is not me in any sense that matters. Rewarding or punishing someone else for my deeds is not justice. And no one can check it: claims to remember past lives depend on meditation reports or on stories, and are unconfirmed by any reliable test.
The Bible gives a different picture: each person lives one life, then faces God. That makes this life precious and urgent. It is not one turn of an endless wheel. It is the time to be reconciled to God.
27Inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once, and after this, judgment,
Hebrews 9:27 (WEB) · context
2For he says, “At an acceptable time I listened to you. In a day of salvation I helped you.” Behold, now is the acceptable time. Behold, now is the day of salvation.
2 Corinthians 6:2 (WEB) · context
12So teach us to count our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalms 90:12 (WEB) · context
The hope rebirth cannot give
Rebirth offers another round. Jesus offers resurrection: the same person, raised and made new, never to die again. He promised a dying man paradise that same day, and he rose himself as the first fruits of all who belong to him.
43Jesus said to him, “Assuredly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
Luke 23:43 (WEB) · context
8We are courageous, I say, and are willing rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.
2 Corinthians 5:8 (WEB) · context
25Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will still live, even if he dies. 26Whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
John 11:25-26 (WEB) · context
20But now Christ has been raised from the dead. He became the first fruit of those who are asleep. 21For since death came by man, the resurrection of the dead also came by man. 22For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
1 Corinthians 15:20-22 (WEB) · context
What Buddhists answer
Buddhists answer that rebirth is like a flame passing from one candle to another: not the same flame, not a different one. Tibetan Buddhism teaches recognised reincarnations (tulkus), such as the Dalai Lama. Some Western Buddhists treat rebirth as moment-to-moment change rather than literal rebirth.
Why that answer falls short
The flame image is poetic, but it concedes that nothing personal continues. If so, rebirth offers no hope for me, and kamma's justice falls on someone who is not me. The Western reinterpretation removes rebirth altogether, which leaves Buddhism with no answer to death. Jesus faced death and came back from it.
Where scholars and traditions differ
- Buddhist schools disagree about what links one life to the next (for example the bhavanga mind in Theravada Abhidhamma, the store consciousness, alaya-vijnana, in Yogacara) and whether there is an intermediate state between lives (affirmed in Tibetan teaching on the bardo, denied in Theravada).
Sources
- Earliest source Samyutta Nikaya 15.3; Majjhima Nikaya 38 (Mahatanhasankhaya Sutta). Translation: Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0), SuttaCentral.
- Milindapanha (The Questions of King Milinda), the simile of the lamp, on what passes from one life to the next.