There must be some aspect of our being, not reliant on our physical body, which goes from life to life, collecting and preserving memories, and then later allowing our present consciousness reliable access to those memories.
I don't see any need to assume this. These memories could simply arise due to conditions. Take DNA: the DNA in my cells is not the same set of molecules that my grandfather had, yet there is causal continuity.
Sorry for the delay, you once again caught me mistakenly publishing a draft ahead of time.
DNA is quite a different case because there is an actual physical continuity between you and your grandfather - the molecules may not be the very same, but they are copies made in the bodies of your parents and physically transferred from one to another, and to you. Even a lay person can easily grasp the outline of the mechanism by which information is transmitted from generation to generation, and happily read newspaper stories about finding genes for this or that. In the case of past-life memories there is no mechanism, and not even a proposed mechanism. It seeks to reinforce faith without attempting to explain why we should believe.
To say that something "could simply arise" is not an explanation that would work in a scientific paradigm, and this post is all about the scientific paradigm. Statements like "could simply arise" work in a different paradigm where you simply admit you don't know and leave it at that. I see this as a persistence of the religious thinking of Pre-enlightenment Europe, which has been given a boost by the medieval Asian thinking which predominates in Buddhism. Personally I think the Enlightenment was a step forward (after all it gave us the internet!) and I like to resist the regression that seems to be endemic in Buddhism. The attitude of "don't ask to many questions" which smacks of feudalism and quiet obedience to authority, something we have, for better or worse, left behind in the west except in our religious institutions. Though of course it remains to be seen whether we have created viable societies on this basis.
I love your Kung Fu story! I have had a somewhat similar experience: discovering that a "spiritual" experience I had in my late 20s was based on a book I had read when I was about 12, and had entirely forgotten until I re-read it.
Coincidentally, I never saw the Kung Fu TV series as a kid, but just started watching it on DVD a few days ago, as research for my Buddhist historical novel. It is going to put Kung Fu in 8th Century India, brought by a monk from Shaolin visiting Nalanda -- which is actually a fairly plausible scenario.
I spent 12 years at MIT so I know from scientists. Every goddamn one of them would *love* to prove the existence of reincarnation, ESP, flying Lamas, take your pick. Doing that would make you the most famous scientist of the century, for sure.
The idea that "alternative" people have that scientists want to suppress alternative paradigms is horribly wrong. "Alternative" paradigms are based on faith, and people who subscribe to them can't see that there is an alternative to faith. So they assume that scientists too must be blindly following a religious worldview, which has grabbed power and is being forced down everyone's throat by the establishment.
I'm not sure how this could change. Other than maybe grabbing power of the establishment and *actually* forcing some science education on people...
Yes! Imagine being the one to demonstrate ESP unequivocally! You would go down in history along with Einstein :-)
The trouble is that very few people really know how to think, or how to critically assess information. And most of those who don't are not interested in learning. I've watched attempts to force feed people science (when I was hungry for every single morsel) and it wasn't pretty.
Have you read Bodhisattva Warriors by T. Dukes? I'm not necessarily recommending it, in fact I rather think it's a bit bonkers, but if you want to place martial arts in an Indian context you might enjoy it.
vasan iyer to FeedBlitz show details 5:43 PM (1 minute ago)
A well discussed article. Thirumular one of the siddha in his book called Thrumanthiram in Tamil in a famous poem says " once a man dies he foregoes his name and gets the title as deadbody and gets burnt along with all his memories.
I appreciated a lot your methodological caveat. Having worked on the reliability of Linguistic Communication (aka Testimony), I share your doubts regarding witnesses, not only children. There are plenty of studies about fake memories construed through showing to someone a fake photo of him\her, even if in a very implausible situation (for instance, on a hot air balloon).
As for the "bearer" of the memories, I wonder whether one could avoid the soul and have only its function, that is, saṃskāras with no owner (or, maybe, an ālayavijñāna as their depository).
But, more in general: why do we need a "scientific" evidence for believing in rebirth? It seems to me that this is especially the case among Western Buddhists (take for instance Graham Smetham –whom, by the way, I find extremely bright and interesting).
I'm not sure that we do need scientific evidence. It's not a path I would take, but when Mr Tart invoked science, I couldn't resist following up the implications :-)
The best reason to believe in rebirth is that it makes us more likely to be moral.
I haven't come across Mr Smetham, but I'm very doubtful indeed about the value of comparing Buddhism to Quantum physics. I've done enough physics to know that Richard Feynman was most likely right when he said "if you think you understand QM, then you don't understand it".
Dear Jayarava, brutally put, my question is: why do many Buddhist believers (or, mutatis mutandis, Evangelic etc. ones) need a scientific evidence supporting a belief which should be rooted in faith, moral or anyway not in natural sciences? Is it because they fail to distinguish spheres of competence or because the only authority they in fact recognise is that of Natural Sciences? (as shown by the fact that natural scientific results are often regarded as an unquestionable authority –in a way a Scientist would never do.) If the latter, then aren't they at the wrong place?
I think this is a good question. Why do we need to find justifications for traditional beliefs? Well, 'belief' is under fire from many directions and not just militant atheists. Many Buddhists who, like me, count the European Enlightenment as part of their cultural heritage, and who are also mindful of the message to the Kālāmas, are not interested in blind faith. It is supposed to be one of the tenets of the Buddhist credo that we do not go in for blind faith (all the evidence against this not withstanding). We have a 2500 year old tradition of mocking monotheism for it's blind faith that has found new life in the West.
I think there may be a failure to distinguish sphere's of competence. People often rabbit on about Quantum Mechanics, for instance, as though it has something to do with religion and the macro world. They don't seem to understand that QM applies to the subatomic world, on scales of nanometres, and that in fact there has been a singular failure to unite QM with models of cosmology. QM has no real world implications on the human scale - it helps clever industrialists to create new products to consume, but in human terms it doesn't tell us anything about our existence. Schrödinger did not in fact have a cat! But the QM bullshit sounds so great, so mystical, that people lap it up without any attempt to understand wave equations or spin states or any of the actual science.
Science is the only other paradigm that people know about to validate their knowledge - and that is not such a bad thing. However it does mean that Social Studies people are now 'Social Scientists', librarians now learn 'Library Science' (that was my other profession). Science is the gold-standard of our time, especially for assessing forms of knowledge. So I don't find it surprising to see science evoked as a talisman by religious. But I do think that on the whole it is naive and hopeless to expect science to confirm metaphysics. I try to do my bit to undermine that enterprise. :-)
Hi Jayarava, let me say that I agree with your methodological approach. The “philosophical” problem, when re-birth and other similar matters are concerned, is that, generally, there’s not a “philosophical” problem. Indeed, in these cases it happens that one upholds a (non-scientific, in the sense of not involving science) theory or another because – as you have pointed out – s/he already believes in it… and this is not philosophy, rather an opinion (doxa) which adapts the premises to the consequences. In this sense, I would like to refer here the two anecdotes about Diagoras – the well-known atheist of the V c. BCE – cited in Cicero’s De natura Deorum: (1) a friend of Diagoras once tried to demonstrate to him the existence of the gods on the basis of the number of votive pictures that those saved from storms at sea had put in a particular temple; this would have proved, according to Diagoras’ friend, the “dint of vows to the gods”; Diagoras’ reply was that “there are nowhere any pictures of those who have been shipwrecked and drowned at sea”. (2) When Diagoras was on a ship in hard weather, the crew began to think that the cause for the storm were the presence of the atheist onboard. Diagoras, then, wondered if the other boats sailing the sea in the same storm also had a Diagoras onboard. To conclude – taking into consideration also what Elisa says –, let us consider the scientific problem of re-birth by referring to proof and need: undoubtedly, someone does need to believe in re-birth etc. (and someone does not), but a need does not need in itself a proof to be demonstrated as such. Please note that “need” is something stronger than “belief”: we believe because we need to believe; and it is also something conceptually neuter: in mathematical terms I would say that need is the direction whereas belief is the sense (right or left, up or down etc.) of that direction. Now, it is when a need is taken to be a proof (“it must be so… because otherwise I have no other answer to that…) that logical distortions and imaginations (we can call them kalpana, vikalpa etc.) arise. But science – Popper teaches – develops depending on falsification, that is, on shifting an answere in a non-answer. To conclude with, I find quite funny – and somehow representative of this discussion :-) – the song of Tim Minchin that you can find here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBUc_kATGgg What do you think about all this? :-) k
Thanks for that. However I think if we are to look at it from the outside as it were - not consenting to the belief system which creates the opinion - then from our point of view there are philosophical problems with rebirth, especially the problem of continuity. That said I do agree that much of this debate, and religious debate generally, is about asserting one opinion or another. If we were to apply the scientific method our starting point would not be a belief, but an observation; and we would not move to belief until we had a demonstrable and reliable mechanism for explaining the phenomena, and even then as you and Elisa have pointed out, it could only ever be a provisional belief, a working model.
I like the stories about Diagoras who I had not heard of before.
I like the point about the difference between a need and a belief. However is a belief in rebirth really a need? I can understand, say, a need for security, or for a sense of meaning and purpose. A belief in rebirth might be a strategy to meet a need, but not a need in itself. I suspect that it is only third order, because the belief in rebirth is (at least in part) motivated by a desire for personal continuity and that arises from such things as: the need to deal with the fear of death; a need for a sense of meaning and purpose; a need for order and structure (which manifests itself not only in punabhāva, but in ideas such as ṛta and dharmatā (or dhamma-niyāma - which is the latest buzz-word in the Triratna Order). So a 'need' is quite a fundamental thing, something quite universal which various cultures and peoples conceptualise in different ways, which in turn leads to different strategies to meet the need.
Fantastic article. I am debating occasionally with a few Buddhists on this issue. Curious on your take:
Some Buddhists try to distinguish between "rebirth" and "reincarnation". But I feel the subtle spins on rebirth are no more convincing than the generic reincarnation stuff. It seems I agree with Batchelor (though I have not read him).
I feel that Buddhists try to hold on to "reincarnation" with futile theological/philosophical gymnastics in the humorously same way that many liberal/progressive Christians try to hang on to "resurrection". The are hanging on to the word because they see it as central to their religion.
For me, the most subtle versions even verge on vacuous truism cloaked in religious jargonism.
Do you see any version of rebirth/reincarnation of value to hang on to?
Yes, actually I do see a distinction between rebirth and reincarnation - but I am a Buddhist! So you might argue that I have to say that :-)
Hindus, as I understand it, believe that an unchanging individual soul (ātman), ultimately identical with the cosmic soul (brahman), goes from birth to birth. Reincarnation literally means 'taking another body' in English, so is a good term for this concept, though I am embarrassed to say I'm not sure if Hindus use a different Sanskrit term from Buddhists.
The traditional Buddhist view accepts a cycle of birth, death, birth etc which was a Pan-Indian belief in the Iron-Age. The Buddhist view is different in two important ways. Firstly there is no unchanging element which links the succession of lives, no ātman. The person is not the same person wearing a different body. The idea is that a being is born in dependence on causes, some of the causes being our actions in this life. I think taken literally this is problematic, but let me come back to it.
Secondly while for Hindu's it is how well you have performed your duty (dharma) which determines your destination, while for Buddhists it is how ethically you have lived your life; your actions (karma). The Buddha recast all existing views on rebirth in ethical terms.
From a scientific world view there is still the problem of continuity. I don't know how we solve this, but it seems to me that until we do then we must be agnostic to avoid the charge of blind faith, and/or hanging onto medieval superstition.
However I have argued previously that, from a pragmatic point of view, it is better to believe in karma and rebirth than not, because it helps to focus the mind on ethics and the consequences of one's actions. So while I personally am sceptical and agnostic I don't try to talk people out of their belief, and if anything suggest that practitioners take it very seriously indeed. I don't much care what non-practitioners think about this, since a lot of the time they just want to argue and to no very good end. I do know that acting ethically as a basis for a spiritual life is difficult at times, and every motivational strategy that helps will be useful.
As for the 'Truth', well which of us knows what it is? As long as people tend towards calm, kindness, and generosity I don't think it matters too much what they believe, in the sense that Insight cures us all of our delusional views in the long run. The best thing is to be ethical and go deeper in meditation, and as far as I can see a belief in rebirth usually helps this.
I've noticed that for many Westerners the idea of reincarnation is an attractive one - not a spur to be more ethical, but an exciting new form of post-mortem personal continuity, which means we don't have to try so hard this time around. I try to discourage this kind of belief.
That said I find literalism as unattractive in Buddhists as I do in heretics. I don't think one can successfully argue for a literal interpretation of rebirth, much less reincarnation, without straying far into the realm of metaphysics and mysticism. The opposite of literalism is a kind of nihilism in which we scoff at any belief, and that is I think equally unattractive.
Stories of resurrection and renewal are found in the myths and stories of humans all over the planet. To dismiss the theme, to not investigate the deep psychological implications of such universal myths is to miss the point of what it is to be human, to fail to understand our own nature, and ultimately I think it must stunt our growth. I recommend Joseph Campbell on this theme as he sees very far.
Best Wishes Jayarava
I've finished season 2 of King Fu now, I wonder if there was a 3rd?
Thanks, that was an excellent response and I agree not only with its content but love your tone (which I learned from). It is hard, in a world where sanctified myths are used oppressively, to know how to strike a balance between understanding the pragmatic, skillful means applications of myths vs. the analytic understanding of both the mind which creates myths and the manipulative and destructive uses of myths. I am sure you understand the tension. Your comment was fantastic, thank you.
I wrote a little blog called "Precious Human Life" where I discuss the fruitful use of the notion of rebirth as used in Tibetan Buddhism.
I am curious to find out why Batchelor switched for "agnostic" to "atheist" on some of his rebirth position. Either way, belief in it or not has no effect on my practice. Does it on yours?
Also, isn't Buddhist scripture replete with reincarnation stories and not just the high philosophy of rebirth? Is this viewed as later additions or text manipulation? I am just curious from an academic point of view on that.
I showed my kids one show of Kung Fu but they did not like it. But they are a little older now, so maybe I will try again! :-)
Thanks. I don't know much about Bachelor. Yes, early Buddhist texts are full of contradictions on the issue of rebirth; and later Buddhist contradict earlier. I take the jataka stories as allegory. In fact I take things as method unless otherwise specified. Such stories are not later, and may well be earlier, since they often seem to hark back to pre-existing characters (some of whom are found in Upaniṣads and the Epics). We can't really judge an Iron-Age literature from a 21st century point of view.
Kung Fu is surprisingly slow compared to contemporary TV. The special effects are cheap. My favourite thing is the latex 'bald' heads; Season 2 added a sprinkling of pepper to suggest stubble. Also the latex wrinkles on 'old' people which are convex instead on concave. I think kids these days would find it difficult to take seriously.
So what sort of contradictions are the Buddhist text containing concerning reincarnation? Could you tell me the main positions -- or have you written about it elsewhere? With various positions, are you saying none of them are anti-rebirth and that they are all just variations of rebirth? Are some rebirth and some reincarnation?
Sorry so many questions. Like I said, I am new to this and a little hungry in the academic sense. Smile
Also, you can see I am leading to asking: "In light of the scriptural contradictions, how can there be an "authentic" Buddhist position on rebirth or reincarnation?"
I think you only need to compare the jātakas with the sutta accounts of punabhava.
You seem to be associating "authentic" with "singular", or "unitary". That is a particular bias of European scholarship with it's long history of monotheism! You don't seem to have taken on my pragmatic view. What is authentically Buddhist is that which leads to liberation - and that need not be restricted to a single account of any concept. I've no interest in "Truth" or any absolutes, I'm interested in what helps.
Actually, I don't think there is an "authentic" view -- the question was to point away from what you are calling the montheist's bias.
I also have no interest in "Truth" or any absolutes. But I am interested in how others try to use these in power moves.
I am wondering, academically, of the various ways those who call themselves Buddhists have used and theologized reincarnation. I am interested in a anthropological way, not a prescriptive theological way. I think we agree more than you read me to agree.
I can't think of a better response to the question: "In light of the scriptural contradictions, how can there be an "authentic" Buddhist position on rebirth or reincarnation?"
Authenticity is not the same as orthodoxy. It is more like orthopraxy with multiple useful approaches. Buddhism is as Buddhists do - it's all authentic Buddhism.
OK. Now my answer is that you're asking the wrong person, because I'm not very interested in that question.
But for the record I can say that there is no single 'position' on rebirth in the Triratna Order; that we understand it in a range of ways, and happily co-exist in that disagreement because what unifies us is not doctrine (sadhamma), but practice (dhammacariya).
A geeky historical note. In India, there were many schools of Buddhism that were not found elsewhere, and so did not survive its destruction by the Mughals 800 years ago. These schools had a diversity of views, some not considered Buddhist now.
Notably, Pudgalavada was apparently by far the largest Buddhist school in India, in terms of numbers of adherents. It was named for the doctrine that, although there is no atman that survives death, there is a pudgala -- "person" -- that does. Just about all modern schools of Buddhism would regard that as unacceptable and extreme eternalism, but it was a mainstream view for most of the history of the religion.
I mention this not because I agree with the Pudgalavada view, but to point out that Buddhism has been even more diverse in the past than at present (so it has scope for wide future variation); and to note that reconciling rebirth with anatman has always been controversial and difficult.
Yes, kind of. I think it's fair to say that Buddhism has never been more diverse than at present. Certainly it never reached the current level of complexity in India. Though it is true to say that some schools - if they ever existed - did not survive. As I understand it there is no evidence at all for some of them except a name in a list. At least the Pudgalavādins left behind a handful of abhidharma texts.
I am very cautious about how to view movements such as the Pudgalavāda, which Chinese pilgrims record as the largest *non-Mahāyāna* sect in the *7th century* (by which time I would presume them to be very much a minority). The problem is that we mostly know about them from the movements which survived, and Buddhists are notoriously vituperative about opposing views. Basically any people holding a view not held by the compilers of Buddhist texts are either the worst kind of scoundrel, or if they have any redeeming qualities they abandon their former view and convert to the orthodox view. This approach is even exhibited towards other Buddhists - just as it is today!
As far as the Pudgalavāda I doubt any modern school would have any understanding of what they taught, let alone the ability to critique them in a neutral and detached way. Especially given the paucity of sources. You only have to look at how the arahant Devadatta ended up being treated by the Theravādin school to get a sense of how vicious Buddhists can be. Reggie Ray does a nice job of rehabilitating Devadatta in his Buddhist Saints in India. One might also refer to the way the Sarvastivādin approach has been misrepresented (see the oeuvre of Collet Cox on this).
I would also suggest that Buddhism being destroyed by the Mughals is overstating things a bit. In fact there were many factors involved in the long decline of Buddhism, and while the Mughals may have delivered some of the final blows, they did not extinguish Jainism! If Jainism survived then something other than the common factor, i.e. something internal to Buddhism in India, must have been the deciding factor.
I like geeky historical notes, but I'd urge you to be far more geeky still. The best geeks cite sources ;-)
Have you ever read a research article in the field of parapsychology? When I started to investigate it more rigorously, back in 2002, I thought much the same as you (though i never thought that claims of ESP were foolish; I just found the psi literature I occasionally glanced at prior to 2002 rather boring, and found the skeptic/CSICOP literature much more interesting).
Anyway, if you're interested in what appears to me to be an unbiased summary, look at Chris Carter's "Parapsychology and the Skeptics". I've summarized much of his material over at the integral world site,
http://www.integralworld.net/salmon2.html
I'm not a buddhist by the way - never joined the club, though I've practiced buddhist meditation, which is another thing.
if you or anybody else is interested, I'm posting an essay, "Shaving Science With Ockham's Razor", soon, and would very much appreciate feedback. write me at donsalmon7@gmail.com. Thanks!
Friday, September 09, 2011
Christian said...
Hi Jayarava, I am curious what your take is on near-death experiences, for instance those researched by Raymond Moody.
I have read accounts of people who have "died" on the operating table and have come back to life to report that they were able to overhear conversations about themselves by people in other rooms and later corroborated those very conversations with the people who were having them. What explanation is there for this?
Though this doesn't directly concern rebirth, or meet your criteria for a test, it seems impossible for me to deny that something beyond the body exists as "experience". How could you possibly know what conversations are being had in another room, especially if you are clinically dead! When I hear of these types of events I feel more confident in my belief in rebirth.
I'm unfamiliar with the literature of near death experiences. So I can't comment directly on it.
But I did recently read an excellent novel with NDE as a theme. It was Passage by Connie Willis and I thought the view on NDEs it gives is quite plausible.
As Thomas Metzinger has observed our consciousness is transparent - we do not see the mechanisms, and we just take what is presented to our awareness as real. WYSIWYG. Hence if someone does have an out-of-body experience they almost can't help but become an ontological dualist. If one is already convinced of this "fact" then that colours how we see testimony. The NDE simply *must* be real, because it confirms our other intuitions. But of course Metzinger has shown that the naive realist is altogether mistaken about the nature of their own mind/body complex and that there is no dualism. I think the results from this area of research is so compelling that our working hypothesis should be that there is no possibility of mind/body duality.
And I would still invoke Hume's criteria for accepting testimony of miracles - the falsehood would have to be more miraculous. Have a look at the documentary "Messiah" by Derren Brown about how easy it is to fool believers. It's on YouTube.
Regards Jayarava
Thursday, March 01, 2012
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I've been involved in a desultory discussion via comments on the blog Buddhist Geeks on the subject of reincarnation and the scientific method. This was sparked by a blog post entitled An Evidence Based Spirituality for the 21st century. In it Charles Tart argues for a scientific approach to ESP and reincarnation (Tart seems to prefer this term to 'rebirth') based on what he considers to be "solid evidence". I have a life-long interest in science, and studied it at school and university. Having invoked the scientific paradigm I think that Mr Tart needs to follow through on the implications of it, and here I will explore some of the them. I want to look particularly at reincarnation from two different points of view - methodological and philosophical - and show that we are far from having a scientific account of reincarnation.
The Problem of Method.
Mr Tart cites some 4000 cases collected at the University of Virginia Medical School, where research and publication continues on this subject, especially by Dr Jim Tucker. Tucker's informants, as Tart says, are children between the ages of 3 and 6; and the 'evidence' is the testimony of these infants. So already we must register some concerns. The theory of mind, the ability to distinguish others as self-conscious individual beings, only develops at around 3 or 4 years. Very young children like this have some difficulty distinguishing self from other; truth from fantasy; memory from imagination; overheard conversation from their own thoughts. So we must doubt their reliability as witnesses. As in legal cases, how one questions very young children has a strong determining effect on the answers you get. We could not accept this kind of 'evidence' without detailed scrutiny of the method - something which would be time consuming and beyond the scope of a blog post. For instance one group of researchers looking at children's evidence in sexual abuse cases conclude:
"It is now acknowledged that persistent suggestive questioning can lead children to provide accounts of events that never occurred, even when they first denied them. Sometimes the questioning results in the child developing a subjectively real memory for an event that never happened."
Such conclusions are widely replicated across a number of different disciplines over the last couple of decades. Even in adults memories are very plastic and subject to change; and subject to invention; imagination can come to seem like memory. Stories repeated by family members can come to seem like personal recollections, even when we weren't there, or born yet. Often the way we recall a situation depends on the emotions associated with the memory. This is why anecdote is seldom invoked as evidence by scientists. The fact that most of the informants are under six may well mean that after that age the distinction between fantasy and fact becomes clearer, or that the children are less able to be lead by enthusiastic researchers with something to prove.
The claim is often that the person could not possibly have known the details of their account from personal experience in this life. Having just trashed anecdote, I'll risk hypocrisy by sharing something from my own life. For years I had memories from childhood which involved an unaccountable knowledge of and respect for Buddhist monks. As a child I understood what meditation was, and once or twice sat down to meditate. It has a lot to do with why I was attracted to Buddhism as an adult. I grew up in a small town in New Zealand and I could not possibly have had contact with Buddhism in my childhood, as far as I know there were no Buddhists within a hundred miles. There was no way for me to have such knowledge from this life. Or so I thought. Last year I started re-watching the old TV show Kung Fu, and realised that this was the source of my 'memories' - it all came flooding back. I'd loved the show as a kid, 30+ years previously, but had simply not made the connection partly because so many years had passed.
If someone, especially a young child, says that they remember a past life, or even if they only appear to have a memory which cannot be explained, that is not the same thing as them actually having had a past life. How would one establish beyond any doubt that a so-called memory was of a past-life? We can easily accept the idea that people have a memory that they cannot account for; but why assume a past-life is the best explanation for this?
I propose this test: one of these people who recalls a past life could predict some previously unknown historical fact, that could then be shown to be true by previously unknown archaeological finds. Get the subject to make a prediction, publish it well in advance of the search, and then go off and dig and find some previously unheard of city or civilisation which substantially confirms the predictions of the person. A variation on this procedure might including getting the person to predict the discovery of the previously unknown species recorded in the fossil record, and then discover a fossil just as described. Or they might show how to read a previously undeciphered script. Something that only a person living in that time and place could know, and that is entirely unknown to us now.
The value of a scientific theory is in the predictions it makes. I would be very interested to hear about any peer-reviewed publication in which a past-life recollection told us something new about the world in the way that I've outlined.
[7 May 2014 - a thorough assessment of the methods and conclusions of another reincarnation enthusiast, Dr Ian Stevenson can be found at the Skeptics Dictionary.]
Philosophical Problems.
The basic contention of Tart et al is that empirical methods can be used to demonstrate metaphysical ideas or perhaps we should say 'abilities' such as extra-sensory perception or recollection of past lives. They are saying that such ideas are demonstrable and measurable, and therefore not really metaphysical, i.e. not beyond physics. However there is a kind of placebo effect at work: ESP is only detectable if you believe in it in the first place. Presumably this is what has gone wrong in all of the properly controlled studies which have shown absolutely no evidence in support of ESP and the like. On the other hand there is also the fact that a desire to believe has allowed charlatans to pull the wool over the eyes of the credulous in a number of cases. The best known, and funniest, of which is the Project Alpha, a hoax perpetrated by some (sleight of hand) magicians which exposed the credulity, and poor methods, of ESP researchers.
When, in 1915, Einstein proposed that gravity is better understood as the bending of space by masses, it might just have remained another novel idea if Arthur Eddington had not demonstrated in 1919 that it is indeed the case. Eddington's observations of the transit of Venus demonstrated that masses bend light, which itself has no mass, as it passes close by them. In the face of this kind of evidence, the world then accepts this new idea even though it is counter to the prevailing view and even counter-intuitive (how can something with no mass be affected by gravity?). The same thing happened with Quantum Mechanics which was not accepted without some fierce opposition lead by none other than Albert Einstein, and now underpins the technological revolution. The same thing is currently happening in cosmology as empirical evidence accumulates that the universe must contain more mass than we can see or our theories predict (dark matter), and that something is pushing galaxies away from each other (dark energy).
Sometimes paradigm changes can be theory led, sometimes observation led. However the empirical side of things is based on published observations which are then repeated by an independent third parties, who often have a vested interest in proving their rivals wrong! It is the build up of repeatable results that creates the pressure to change a world view - and let's be clear that our views of the world can and do change from time to time. The dark matter/energy observations will eventually change our understanding of the cosmos for instance. So called 'cold fusion' by contrast could not recreated in any of the labs which tried, and it soon became apparent that the announcement had been premature to say the least. ESP has being researched for 200 years without coming up with one uncontestable result, while at the same time many frauds have been exposed.
Reincarnation fans complain that if scientists would only apply empirical methods to the study of reincarnation they would see it is real. But equally if a scientist reports a negative result it is because they are too materialistic, and not open to new ideas (tell that to any astronomer or nuclear physicist of the last century and they might beg to differ). Usually an unequivocal negative result requires a scientist to abandon their theory (e.g. phlogiston, or the æther) and seek a new explanation.
There is a much greater philosophical problem with so-called memories of past-lives, and it is one that plagues all theories of rebirth/reincarnation. Such theories suggests a continuity between lives, over multiple lives, a personal continuity. This raises the question about the nature of that continuity? There must be some aspect of our being, not reliant on our physical body, which goes from life to life, collecting and preserving memories, and then later allowing our present consciousness reliable access to those memories, though apparently only during childhood. What can survive intact through multiple lives and deaths, and accurately preserve memories? I know of nothing which would meet the requirement except a soul of some kind.
Now, if science is to offer any insight into the phenomena at all, then it would be in establishing the existence of, and the mode of functioning of this soul-like phenomena which provides a medium for memory storage external to the body, and particularly the brain. They would show how and where such memories are stored. Of course they must take into account the well demonstrated role of the brain in the formation, storage and recall of memories of living humans - we can lose all of our memories and the ability to make new ones through brain injury. (I recommend Joseph LeDoux's book The Emotional Brain[Image] for a survey of the history of this field). The idea that memories survive the death of the entire brain, and surface sometime later in a person with no close genetic relationship, requires explanation. Tart et al, having invoked the scientific paradigm, must seek to explain it within that paradigm. It's up to people like Mr Tart and his colleagues and supporters to come up with the theories that can be tested, with measurements that can be made. As I understand it they do not propose mechanisms for metaphysical memories. They do not propose theories that can be tested. They merely churn out anecdote. It is not sufficient for the idea to be taken seriously to invoke the "50 million Elvis fans can't be wrong" argument.
In Conclusion
I think it is only right to be sceptical towards the idea of recollection of past lives. It is a deeply problematic metaphysical belief. It will not be easy to demonstrate that life continues after the death of the individual, and as far as I know this has yet to happen. My view is that a belief in past-life recollection is more than likely linked to a deep desire for personal continuity. It's poignant, it's understandable, but it is entirely unscientific. By invoking science the meta-physicians are caught out. If the phenomena is material enough to be observed then it must either obey known laws, or we must recast those laws to account for it. But if it really is as described in faith texts, then it is not dependent on the material world and will be forever beyond the reach of empirical science. So why invoke the scientific method in the first place? I will have to leave this question hanging, but it is one I must come back to. The conflict between the ancient world views preserved in the amber of religious faith, and the modern empirical world view is on-going.
Update: 10.10.2010
Anyone interested in the way memory works will be fascinated by this story from the Guardian Newspaper: Meredith Maran: Did my father really abuse me? It is an extract from her book My Lie: A True Story of False Memory,[Image] which looks at the way one intelligent and articulate woman manufactured 'memories' of incest out of a febrile imagination, on the basis of her deep (and positive) involvement in the issue of sexual abuse, and a culture which demonised men. I don't think this in any way trivialises the issue of sexual abuse, but it does give us insights into the complexity of the mind, and memory in particular.
Thanks to my friend Vidyavajra for bringing this to my attention.
Update 24-7-11
This cartoon on Calamities of Nature is apposite. As it says: either souls interact with the world and are within the province of science; or they do not, in which case why should they concern us?
Update 7 May 2014
Sean Carroll a real scientist talks about life after death: Physics and the Immortality of the Soul;
28 Comments
Close this window Jump to comment formThere must be some aspect of our being, not reliant on our physical body, which goes from life to life, collecting and preserving memories, and then later allowing our present consciousness reliable access to those memories.
I don't see any need to assume this. These memories could simply arise due to conditions. Take DNA: the DNA in my cells is not the same set of molecules that my grandfather had, yet there is causal continuity.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Hi Gruff,
Sorry for the delay, you once again caught me mistakenly publishing a draft ahead of time.
DNA is quite a different case because there is an actual physical continuity between you and your grandfather - the molecules may not be the very same, but they are copies made in the bodies of your parents and physically transferred from one to another, and to you. Even a lay person can easily grasp the outline of the mechanism by which information is transmitted from generation to generation, and happily read newspaper stories about finding genes for this or that. In the case of past-life memories there is no mechanism, and not even a proposed mechanism. It seeks to reinforce faith without attempting to explain why we should believe.
To say that something "could simply arise" is not an explanation that would work in a scientific paradigm, and this post is all about the scientific paradigm. Statements like "could simply arise" work in a different paradigm where you simply admit you don't know and leave it at that. I see this as a persistence of the religious thinking of Pre-enlightenment Europe, which has been given a boost by the medieval Asian thinking which predominates in Buddhism. Personally I think the Enlightenment was a step forward (after all it gave us the internet!) and I like to resist the regression that seems to be endemic in Buddhism. The attitude of "don't ask to many questions" which smacks of feudalism and quiet obedience to authority, something we have, for better or worse, left behind in the west except in our religious institutions. Though of course it remains to be seen whether we have created viable societies on this basis.
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Friday, October 01, 2010
I love your Kung Fu story! I have had a somewhat similar experience: discovering that a "spiritual" experience I had in my late 20s was based on a book I had read when I was about 12, and had entirely forgotten until I re-read it.
Coincidentally, I never saw the Kung Fu TV series as a kid, but just started watching it on DVD a few days ago, as research for my Buddhist historical novel. It is going to put Kung Fu in 8th Century India, brought by a monk from Shaolin visiting Nalanda -- which is actually a fairly plausible scenario.
I spent 12 years at MIT so I know from scientists. Every goddamn one of them would *love* to prove the existence of reincarnation, ESP, flying Lamas, take your pick. Doing that would make you the most famous scientist of the century, for sure.
The idea that "alternative" people have that scientists want to suppress alternative paradigms is horribly wrong. "Alternative" paradigms are based on faith, and people who subscribe to them can't see that there is an alternative to faith. So they assume that scientists too must be blindly following a religious worldview, which has grabbed power and is being forced down everyone's throat by the establishment.
I'm not sure how this could change. Other than maybe grabbing power of the establishment and *actually* forcing some science education on people...
Best wishes,
David
Friday, October 01, 2010
Hi David
Yes! Imagine being the one to demonstrate ESP unequivocally! You would go down in history along with Einstein :-)
The trouble is that very few people really know how to think, or how to critically assess information. And most of those who don't are not interested in learning. I've watched attempts to force feed people science (when I was hungry for every single morsel) and it wasn't pretty.
Have you read Bodhisattva Warriors by T. Dukes? I'm not necessarily recommending it, in fact I rather think it's a bit bonkers, but if you want to place martial arts in an Indian context you might enjoy it.
Cheers
Jayarava
Friday, October 01, 2010
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A well discussed article. Thirumular one of the siddha in his book called Thrumanthiram in Tamil in a famous poem says " once a man dies he foregoes his name and gets the title as deadbody and gets burnt along with all his memories.
vasan
Sunday, October 03, 2010
Hi Vasan,
Interesting, I will have to follow that up at some point - I am largely ignorant of Tamil literature.
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Sunday, October 03, 2010
I appreciated a lot your methodological caveat. Having worked on the reliability of Linguistic Communication (aka Testimony), I share your doubts regarding witnesses, not only children. There are plenty of studies about fake memories construed through showing to someone a fake photo of him\her, even if in a very implausible situation (for instance, on a hot air balloon).
As for the "bearer" of the memories, I wonder whether one could avoid the soul and have only its function, that is, saṃskāras with no owner (or, maybe, an ālayavijñāna as their depository).
But, more in general: why do we need a "scientific" evidence for believing in rebirth? It seems to me that this is especially the case among Western Buddhists (take for instance Graham Smetham –whom, by the way, I find extremely bright and interesting).
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Hi Elisa
I'm not sure that we do need scientific evidence. It's not a path I would take, but when Mr Tart invoked science, I couldn't resist following up the implications :-)
The best reason to believe in rebirth is that it makes us more likely to be moral.
I haven't come across Mr Smetham, but I'm very doubtful indeed about the value of comparing Buddhism to Quantum physics. I've done enough physics to know that Richard Feynman was most likely right when he said "if you think you understand QM, then you don't understand it".
Cheers
Jayarava
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Dear Jayarava,
brutally put, my question is: why do many Buddhist believers (or, mutatis mutandis, Evangelic etc. ones) need a scientific evidence supporting a belief which should be rooted in faith, moral or anyway not in natural sciences?
Is it because they fail to distinguish spheres of competence or because the only authority they in fact recognise is that of Natural Sciences? (as shown by the fact that natural scientific results are often regarded as an unquestionable authority –in a way a Scientist would never do.) If the latter, then aren't they at the wrong place?
Friday, October 08, 2010
Hi Elisa
I think this is a good question. Why do we need to find justifications for traditional beliefs? Well, 'belief' is under fire from many directions and not just militant atheists. Many Buddhists who, like me, count the European Enlightenment as part of their cultural heritage, and who are also mindful of the message to the Kālāmas, are not interested in blind faith. It is supposed to be one of the tenets of the Buddhist credo that we do not go in for blind faith (all the evidence against this not withstanding). We have a 2500 year old tradition of mocking monotheism for it's blind faith that has found new life in the West.
I think there may be a failure to distinguish sphere's of competence. People often rabbit on about Quantum Mechanics, for instance, as though it has something to do with religion and the macro world. They don't seem to understand that QM applies to the subatomic world, on scales of nanometres, and that in fact there has been a singular failure to unite QM with models of cosmology. QM has no real world implications on the human scale - it helps clever industrialists to create new products to consume, but in human terms it doesn't tell us anything about our existence. Schrödinger did not in fact have a cat! But the QM bullshit sounds so great, so mystical, that people lap it up without any attempt to understand wave equations or spin states or any of the actual science.
Science is the only other paradigm that people know about to validate their knowledge - and that is not such a bad thing. However it does mean that Social Studies people are now 'Social Scientists', librarians now learn 'Library Science' (that was my other profession). Science is the gold-standard of our time, especially for assessing forms of knowledge. So I don't find it surprising to see science evoked as a talisman by religious. But I do think that on the whole it is naive and hopeless to expect science to confirm metaphysics. I try to do my bit to undermine that enterprise. :-)
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Friday, October 08, 2010
Hi Jayarava,
let me say that I agree with your methodological approach.
The “philosophical” problem, when re-birth and other similar matters are concerned, is that, generally, there’s not a “philosophical” problem. Indeed, in these cases it happens that one upholds a (non-scientific, in the sense of not involving science) theory or another because – as you have pointed out – s/he already believes in it… and this is not philosophy, rather an opinion (doxa) which adapts the premises to the consequences.
In this sense, I would like to refer here the two anecdotes about Diagoras – the well-known atheist of the V c. BCE – cited in Cicero’s De natura Deorum: (1) a friend of Diagoras once tried to demonstrate to him the existence of the gods on the basis of the number of votive pictures that those saved from storms at sea had put in a particular temple; this would have proved, according to Diagoras’ friend, the “dint of vows to the gods”; Diagoras’ reply was that “there are nowhere any pictures of those who have been shipwrecked and drowned at sea”. (2) When Diagoras was on a ship in hard weather, the crew began to think that the cause for the storm were the presence of the atheist onboard. Diagoras, then, wondered if the other boats sailing the sea in the same storm also had a Diagoras onboard.
To conclude – taking into consideration also what Elisa says –, let us consider the scientific problem of re-birth by referring to proof and need: undoubtedly, someone does need to believe in re-birth etc. (and someone does not), but a need does not need in itself a proof to be demonstrated as such. Please note that “need” is something stronger than “belief”: we believe because we need to believe; and it is also something conceptually neuter: in mathematical terms I would say that need is the direction whereas belief is the sense (right or left, up or down etc.) of that direction. Now, it is when a need is taken to be a proof (“it must be so… because otherwise I have no other answer to that…) that logical distortions and imaginations (we can call them kalpana, vikalpa etc.) arise. But science – Popper teaches – develops depending on falsification, that is, on shifting an answere in a non-answer.
To conclude with, I find quite funny – and somehow representative of this discussion :-) – the song of Tim Minchin that you can find here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBUc_kATGgg
What do you think about all this?
:-) k
Friday, October 08, 2010
Hi Krishna,
Thanks for that. However I think if we are to look at it from the outside as it were - not consenting to the belief system which creates the opinion - then from our point of view there are philosophical problems with rebirth, especially the problem of continuity. That said I do agree that much of this debate, and religious debate generally, is about asserting one opinion or another. If we were to apply the scientific method our starting point would not be a belief, but an observation; and we would not move to belief until we had a demonstrable and reliable mechanism for explaining the phenomena, and even then as you and Elisa have pointed out, it could only ever be a provisional belief, a working model.
I like the stories about Diagoras who I had not heard of before.
I like the point about the difference between a need and a belief. However is a belief in rebirth really a need? I can understand, say, a need for security, or for a sense of meaning and purpose. A belief in rebirth might be a strategy to meet a need, but not a need in itself. I suspect that it is only third order, because the belief in rebirth is (at least in part) motivated by a desire for personal continuity and that arises from such things as: the need to deal with the fear of death; a need for a sense of meaning and purpose; a need for order and structure (which manifests itself not only in punabhāva, but in ideas such as ṛta and dharmatā (or dhamma-niyāma - which is the latest buzz-word in the Triratna Order). So a 'need' is quite a fundamental thing, something quite universal which various cultures and peoples conceptualise in different ways, which in turn leads to different strategies to meet the need.
Regards
Jayarava
Friday, October 08, 2010
Fantastic article.
I am debating occasionally with a few Buddhists on this issue. Curious on your take:
Some Buddhists try to distinguish between "rebirth" and "reincarnation". But I feel the subtle spins on rebirth are no more convincing than the generic reincarnation stuff. It seems I agree with Batchelor (though I have not read him).
I feel that Buddhists try to hold on to "reincarnation" with futile theological/philosophical gymnastics in the humorously same way that many liberal/progressive Christians try to hang on to "resurrection". The are hanging on to the word because they see it as central to their religion.
For me, the most subtle versions even verge on vacuous truism cloaked in religious jargonism.
Do you see any version of rebirth/reincarnation of value to hang on to?
Thursday, October 14, 2010
PS - I too LOVED the kung-fu story!
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Hi Sabio
Yes, actually I do see a distinction between rebirth and reincarnation - but I am a Buddhist! So you might argue that I have to say that :-)
Hindus, as I understand it, believe that an unchanging individual soul (ātman), ultimately identical with the cosmic soul (brahman), goes from birth to birth. Reincarnation literally means 'taking another body' in English, so is a good term for this concept, though I am embarrassed to say I'm not sure if Hindus use a different Sanskrit term from Buddhists.
The traditional Buddhist view accepts a cycle of birth, death, birth etc which was a Pan-Indian belief in the Iron-Age. The Buddhist view is different in two important ways. Firstly there is no unchanging element which links the succession of lives, no ātman. The person is not the same person wearing a different body. The idea is that a being is born in dependence on causes, some of the causes being our actions in this life. I think taken literally this is problematic, but let me come back to it.
Secondly while for Hindu's it is how well you have performed your duty (dharma) which determines your destination, while for Buddhists it is how ethically you have lived your life; your actions (karma). The Buddha recast all existing views on rebirth in ethical terms.
From a scientific world view there is still the problem of continuity. I don't know how we solve this, but it seems to me that until we do then we must be agnostic to avoid the charge of blind faith, and/or hanging onto medieval superstition.
However I have argued previously that, from a pragmatic point of view, it is better to believe in karma and rebirth than not, because it helps to focus the mind on ethics and the consequences of one's actions. So while I personally am sceptical and agnostic I don't try to talk people out of their belief, and if anything suggest that practitioners take it very seriously indeed. I don't much care what non-practitioners think about this, since a lot of the time they just want to argue and to no very good end. I do know that acting ethically as a basis for a spiritual life is difficult at times, and every motivational strategy that helps will be useful.
As for the 'Truth', well which of us knows what it is? As long as people tend towards calm, kindness, and generosity I don't think it matters too much what they believe, in the sense that Insight cures us all of our delusional views in the long run. The best thing is to be ethical and go deeper in meditation, and as far as I can see a belief in rebirth usually helps this.
I've noticed that for many Westerners the idea of reincarnation is an attractive one - not a spur to be more ethical, but an exciting new form of post-mortem personal continuity, which means we don't have to try so hard this time around. I try to discourage this kind of belief.
That said I find literalism as unattractive in Buddhists as I do in heretics. I don't think one can successfully argue for a literal interpretation of rebirth, much less reincarnation, without straying far into the realm of metaphysics and mysticism. The opposite of literalism is a kind of nihilism in which we scoff at any belief, and that is I think equally unattractive.
Stories of resurrection and renewal are found in the myths and stories of humans all over the planet. To dismiss the theme, to not investigate the deep psychological implications of such universal myths is to miss the point of what it is to be human, to fail to understand our own nature, and ultimately I think it must stunt our growth. I recommend Joseph Campbell on this theme as he sees very far.
Best Wishes
Jayarava
I've finished season 2 of King Fu now, I wonder if there was a 3rd?
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Hey Jayarava,
Thanks, that was an excellent response and I agree not only with its content but love your tone (which I learned from). It is hard, in a world where sanctified myths are used oppressively, to know how to strike a balance between understanding the pragmatic, skillful means applications of myths vs. the analytic understanding of both the mind which creates myths and the manipulative and destructive uses of myths. I am sure you understand the tension. Your comment was fantastic, thank you.
I wrote a little blog called "Precious Human Life" where I discuss the fruitful use of the notion of rebirth as used in Tibetan Buddhism.
I am curious to find out why Batchelor switched for "agnostic" to "atheist" on some of his rebirth position. Either way, belief in it or not has no effect on my practice. Does it on yours?
Also, isn't Buddhist scripture replete with reincarnation stories and not just the high philosophy of rebirth? Is this viewed as later additions or text manipulation? I am just curious from an academic point of view on that.
I showed my kids one show of Kung Fu but they did not like it. But they are a little older now, so maybe I will try again! :-)
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Hi Sabio
Thanks. I don't know much about Bachelor. Yes, early Buddhist texts are full of contradictions on the issue of rebirth; and later Buddhist contradict earlier. I take the jataka stories as allegory. In fact I take things as method unless otherwise specified. Such stories are not later, and may well be earlier, since they often seem to hark back to pre-existing characters (some of whom are found in Upaniṣads and the Epics). We can't really judge an Iron-Age literature from a 21st century point of view.
Kung Fu is surprisingly slow compared to contemporary TV. The special effects are cheap. My favourite thing is the latex 'bald' heads; Season 2 added a sprinkling of pepper to suggest stubble. Also the latex wrinkles on 'old' people which are convex instead on concave. I think kids these days would find it difficult to take seriously.
Friday, October 15, 2010
@ Jayarava
So what sort of contradictions are the Buddhist text containing concerning reincarnation? Could you tell me the main positions -- or have you written about it elsewhere?
With various positions, are you saying none of them are anti-rebirth and that they are all just variations of rebirth? Are some rebirth and some reincarnation?
Sorry so many questions. Like I said, I am new to this and a little hungry in the academic sense. Smile
Also, you can see I am leading to asking: "In light of the scriptural contradictions, how can there be an "authentic" Buddhist position on rebirth or reincarnation?"
Friday, October 15, 2010
Hi Sabio
I think you only need to compare the jātakas with the sutta accounts of punabhava.
You seem to be associating "authentic" with "singular", or "unitary". That is a particular bias of European scholarship with it's long history of monotheism! You don't seem to have taken on my pragmatic view. What is authentically Buddhist is that which leads to liberation - and that need not be restricted to a single account of any concept. I've no interest in "Truth" or any absolutes, I'm interested in what helps.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Actually, I don't think there is an "authentic" view -- the question was to point away from what you are calling the montheist's bias.
I also have no interest in "Truth" or any absolutes. But I am interested in how others try to use these in power moves.
I am wondering, academically, of the various ways those who call themselves Buddhists have used and theologized reincarnation. I am interested in a anthropological way, not a prescriptive theological way. I think we agree more than you read me to agree.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Hi Sabio
I can't think of a better response to the question: "In light of the scriptural contradictions, how can there be an "authentic" Buddhist position on rebirth or reincarnation?"
Authenticity is not the same as orthodoxy. It is more like orthopraxy with multiple useful approaches. Buddhism is as Buddhists do - it's all authentic Buddhism.
Perhaps you could rephrase the question?
Friday, October 15, 2010
So the question, more carefully crafted, may be:
I am curious about the various positions taken by the various Buddhist groups concerning rebirth.
Friday, October 15, 2010
@Sabio
OK. Now my answer is that you're asking the wrong person, because I'm not very interested in that question.
But for the record I can say that there is no single 'position' on rebirth in the Triratna Order; that we understand it in a range of ways, and happily co-exist in that disagreement because what unifies us is not doctrine (sadhamma), but practice (dhammacariya).
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Friday, October 15, 2010
A geeky historical note. In India, there were many schools of Buddhism that were not found elsewhere, and so did not survive its destruction by the Mughals 800 years ago. These schools had a diversity of views, some not considered Buddhist now.
Notably, Pudgalavada was apparently by far the largest Buddhist school in India, in terms of numbers of adherents. It was named for the doctrine that, although there is no atman that survives death, there is a pudgala -- "person" -- that does. Just about all modern schools of Buddhism would regard that as unacceptable and extreme eternalism, but it was a mainstream view for most of the history of the religion.
I mention this not because I agree with the Pudgalavada view, but to point out that Buddhism has been even more diverse in the past than at present (so it has scope for wide future variation); and to note that reconciling rebirth with anatman has always been controversial and difficult.
Best wishes,
David
Friday, October 15, 2010
Hi David,
Yes, kind of. I think it's fair to say that Buddhism has never been more diverse than at present. Certainly it never reached the current level of complexity in India. Though it is true to say that some schools - if they ever existed - did not survive. As I understand it there is no evidence at all for some of them except a name in a list. At least the Pudgalavādins left behind a handful of abhidharma texts.
I am very cautious about how to view movements such as the Pudgalavāda, which Chinese pilgrims record as the largest *non-Mahāyāna* sect in the *7th century* (by which time I would presume them to be very much a minority). The problem is that we mostly know about them from the movements which survived, and Buddhists are notoriously vituperative about opposing views. Basically any people holding a view not held by the compilers of Buddhist texts are either the worst kind of scoundrel, or if they have any redeeming qualities they abandon their former view and convert to the orthodox view. This approach is even exhibited towards other Buddhists - just as it is today!
As far as the Pudgalavāda I doubt any modern school would have any understanding of what they taught, let alone the ability to critique them in a neutral and detached way. Especially given the paucity of sources. You only have to look at how the arahant Devadatta ended up being treated by the Theravādin school to get a sense of how vicious Buddhists can be. Reggie Ray does a nice job of rehabilitating Devadatta in his Buddhist Saints in India. One might also refer to the way the Sarvastivādin approach has been misrepresented (see the oeuvre of Collet Cox on this).
I would also suggest that Buddhism being destroyed by the Mughals is overstating things a bit. In fact there were many factors involved in the long decline of Buddhism, and while the Mughals may have delivered some of the final blows, they did not extinguish Jainism! If Jainism survived then something other than the common factor, i.e. something internal to Buddhism in India, must have been the deciding factor.
I like geeky historical notes, but I'd urge you to be far more geeky still. The best geeks cite sources ;-)
Regards
Jayarava
Friday, October 15, 2010
Hi Jayarava:
Have you ever read a research article in the field of parapsychology? When I started to investigate it more rigorously, back in 2002, I thought much the same as you (though i never thought that claims of ESP were foolish; I just found the psi literature I occasionally glanced at prior to 2002 rather boring, and found the skeptic/CSICOP literature much more interesting).
Anyway, if you're interested in what appears to me to be an unbiased summary, look at Chris Carter's "Parapsychology and the Skeptics". I've summarized much of his material over at the integral world site,
http://www.integralworld.net/salmon2.html
I'm not a buddhist by the way - never joined the club, though I've practiced buddhist meditation, which is another thing.
if you or anybody else is interested, I'm posting an essay, "Shaving Science With Ockham's Razor", soon, and would very much appreciate feedback. write me at donsalmon7@gmail.com. Thanks!
Friday, September 09, 2011
Hi Jayarava,
I am curious what your take is on near-death experiences, for instance those researched by Raymond Moody.
I have read accounts of people who have "died" on the operating table and have come back to life to report that they were able to overhear conversations about themselves by people in other rooms and later corroborated those very conversations with the people who were having them. What explanation is there for this?
Though this doesn't directly concern rebirth, or meet your criteria for a test, it seems impossible for me to deny that something beyond the body exists as "experience". How could you possibly know what conversations are being had in another room, especially if you are clinically dead! When I hear of these types of events I feel more confident in my belief in rebirth.
Best,
Christian
Thursday, March 01, 2012
Hi Christian
I'm unfamiliar with the literature of near death experiences. So I can't comment directly on it.
But I did recently read an excellent novel with NDE as a theme. It was Passage by Connie Willis and I thought the view on NDEs it gives is quite plausible.
As Thomas Metzinger has observed our consciousness is transparent - we do not see the mechanisms, and we just take what is presented to our awareness as real. WYSIWYG. Hence if someone does have an out-of-body experience they almost can't help but become an ontological dualist. If one is already convinced of this "fact" then that colours how we see testimony. The NDE simply *must* be real, because it confirms our other intuitions. But of course Metzinger has shown that the naive realist is altogether mistaken about the nature of their own mind/body complex and that there is no dualism. I think the results from this area of research is so compelling that our working hypothesis should be that there is no possibility of mind/body duality.
And I would still invoke Hume's criteria for accepting testimony of miracles - the falsehood would have to be more miraculous. Have a look at the documentary "Messiah" by Derren Brown about how easy it is to fool believers. It's on YouTube.
Regards
Jayarava
Thursday, March 01, 2012