Reincarnation

Reincarnation is the belief that individuals are somehow able to survive bodily death by taking birth again in another form. A belief in reincarnation is universal and persistent, found in various versions on nearly every continent from ancient times to the present day. Evidence supports nearly equal antiquity of belief in reincarnation in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Because a complete list of the numerous religions and philosophies, ancient and modern, which affirm some form of reincarnation would be too large a subject to cover in this entry, the following necessarily treats the topic selectively, not comprehensively. The views selected represent the wide-ranging versions and variations of belief in reincarnation from ancient times to the present throughout the world, in particular, in India, Ancient Greece, Africa, the British Isles, and North America.

India

At least as early as the 8th century B.C.E., the idea of reincarnation appeared in the Upanishads, part of the authoritative revelation of reality for most Hindu religious and philosophical traditions. Reincarnation is described there metaphorically in this way: As a caterpillar inches its way from the leaf of one plant onto the leaf of another plant, so [Page 841]the soul leaves behind one body and crosses over into a new one.

Birth and death are recurring events that punctuate the beginningless and endless cyclical syndrome known to indigenous Indian religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism) by the Sanskrit term samsara, meaning flows together or wanders. Samsara metaphorically pictures the incessant flow of the simultaneity of birth and death, with people at every moment entering and exiting the world, wandering from one birth to another in search of liberation and release from the otherwise beginningless and endless repetition of reincarnation. Hence philosophically speaking, reincarnation is a predicament, not a solution. Philosophically speaking, birth is a mistake but it can be corrected through liberation from the cycle of birth and death.

The desire for liberation has never been normative or popular in India but ideal and exceptional. More popular aims of life are of equal religious legitimacy, including the pursuit of sensual, aesthetic, and sexual pleasure, and the ambition for social success in the form of material wealth, prestige, and power. Most Hindus seek meaningful lives pursuing pleasure and success and take consolation in the doctrine of reincarnation. For them reincarnation promises that death is not the end and provides unlimited opportunities to experience the innumerable pleasures and to pursue promising prospects of social success. However, to those exceptional individuals in each generation of Indian society who seek liberation above all else, the very same doctrine of reincarnation presents a problem to overcome, not a therapeutic remedy for human anxiety about facing finitude. The person who transcends reincarnation discovers the deep innermost self known as Atman, the birthless, deathless, changeless ultimate Self underlying all of the changing personalities that take repeated births until the true Self (Atman) is realized.

The doctrine of reincarnation in India also addresses and answers the psychological need to provide an explanatory account of the world that satisfies the human desire for justice in the universe. By doing good, a person becomes good; by doing bad, a person becomes bad. Reincarnation functions as a cultural vehicle of social cohesion in India. Far from instilling fatalistic attitudes, the doctrine of reincarnation, which is governed by the principle of karma, serves as a powerful motivation for good moral behavior and exerts a restraining influence on antisocial impulses and inclinations. Reincarnation is driven by the principle of karma, which asserts that all human volitional actions engender results that the performer of the actions must live to face and experience somewhere, sometime, somehow—in pleasure or pain—sooner or later in this life or a future reincarnation. For example, the ancient code of Manu warns that a student who depends too much on the teacher for material support will be reborn as a worm, and the one who speaks disparagingly about the teacher, even though the teacher may warrant it, will be reborn as a bug. People obsessed with food and driven by gluttony are reborn as pigs.

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