Reincarnation: A Second Chance or Stuck on a Treadmill?

Aum namo bhagavate vasudevaya.

Haribol.

So, we actually spoke on the subject of reincarnation about nine months ago, but the emphasis was a little bit different. The emphasis there was, how did we get this current body?

So, of course, the understanding of all—the foundation of all spiritual understanding is the appreciation that I am an eternal spiritual being, and I’m temporarily residing within this gross physical body. And even though the body has many labels, male, female, young, old, tall, short, fat, thin, etc., those labels do not define me, the spiritual being inside, they just define the body that I have.

And then, of course, a question that would come from that is, “Well, how did I end up with this body?” So, that’s what we sort of focused on last time.

This time around, I think it came from a question; and so James has asked me to speak on this, and it’s a bit different. “Is reincarnation, should it be considered like a second chance, or is it being stuck on a treadmill?” Doesn’t sound very interesting, does it, being stuck on a treadmill, just going for it and not actually going anywhere, chasing some goal, some ambition, something considered desirable, and just running and running and running, but actually not going anywhere, being sort of stuck in one place?

This question of reincarnation, or it’s actually more accurately—well actually, reincarnation, if we understand it from its root—carne in Latin means flesh, which means to retake on the flesh, to do it again, so—but most people don’t understand the word that way. But it’s probably more accurately referred to as the transmigration of the soul, of the spiritual being.

This is an age-old question, although most people in the Western world, or who have been influenced by Christianity are sort of like, this is a topic that’s like, “What!?” They’re not really exposed to the idea very much within the context of their religion or their society. But this is an understanding that is embraced by the majority of the world’s population. They have some form of appreciation of this.

Within early Christianity, this was relatively widely understood. And when we look back at the Greek philosophers who have really shaped the Western world, and much of the Near East, what I would call—you had Pythagoras, who firmly embraced the concept of an eternal being that repeatedly takes on a different body, and there was also Plato. Plato famously understood or appreciated this. And these early Greek philosophers actually had a big influence on early Christianity. A lot of people are really unfamiliar with this, but—for example, a big chunk of the Bible was written in Greek. That was like a common language, a language of scholars and educated people; and so we see the influence of the Greek philosophers.

There was one early, considered father of the Christian church. His name was Origen, and he broadly accepted the idea of reincarnation. And this was sort of like very problematic in the early days of Christianity when they were still trying to sort of formulate what was the actual philosophy behind the belief system and the religious practice. And people were— there was a big debate about, “Is the soul created in each body and had no pre-existence, or did the soul exist prior to having that body?” And it was quite a fierce debate; and different groups within the Christian world embraced one side of this or the other.

And it wasn’t until 15, oh no, 553 that it was finally and officially outlawed. You weren’t allowed to have this idea, you weren’t allowed to embrace it, because it posed big problems, like the idea of original sin.

You know, before Adam and Eve, nobody else existed. Adam and Eve were the first people, and they engaged in an act that was referenced as original sin, and therefore all their descendants who came into being after them carried this sin, which they referred to as original sin. And so if the soul has some pre-existence since time immemorial that sort of invalidates that philosophical idea.

So it was actually very contentious. But in 553 there was a big conclave at Constantinople, which was the centre of the Christian world, pretty much, at that time. The Roman Empire was split, and this was run by the Emperor Justinian, but he sometimes took offense to the Pope. The Pope didn’t like some of the things that he did. So he actually locked the Pope up in jail, because the Pope wasn’t going along with some of his edicts. And so during the time of this religious conference (it was called the Ecumenical Council at Constantinople. I think it was the fifth one) the Pope had been locked up, and it was not the theologians, but it was the Emperor Justinian who decreed, “No. We’re getting rid of this. I’m sorry, this has to be outlawed.” And so the council—I mean, if they’re locking the Pope up, we’d better get with the program and agree to this idea as well! And yes, it’s officially going to be outlawed from this point forward.

And so that was pretty much the end of things in relation to Christianity, although there are still a number of references that existed within the Bible where they reference what’s called pre-existence, your existing before taking on this body. And in one of these situations, Jesus Christ had performed a miracle of curing a blind person who had been blind from birth. And the disciples put a question to Jesus and asked him, “Why was this person blind? Was it because of his own sins, or the sins of his parents?” And of course, how could you ask that question: since he was born blind, how could he have committed sins previously, unless there was some idea of pre-existence, that you were existing, but perhaps in another body, and undertook these things? And Jesus answered in an unexpected way. He didn’t address, but he didn’t say, “No, that’s a bunch of nonsense. That’s not true.” He shifted focus to something else.

So while the understanding, or the concept, of reincarnation may not be so common in the Western world, although a huge percentage of people in the Western world accept it—but while it may be uncommon, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have some very profound roots in spiritual traditions that are embraced by the majority of people in this world.

So, in relation to the question, well, sort of like, almost like, “What’s it for? With reincarnation, is it like getting a second chance, if you screwed up one time, one lifetime, you get another chance to make good? Or is it like you’re stuck on this treadmill, going nowhere, just experiencing reincarnation from one body to the next, to the next, to the next?” And in the Vedas their answer is, “Well, it’s both of those things. Both of those things are true.”

And so I will kind of try to present the understanding that is shared by the ancient sages and found in the Vedic literature. They had a term called saṁsāra, saṁsāra or samsāra, which means the cycle of repeated birth and death. And the understanding was, you get to the end of the usability of the body—when the body, because of an accident or disease or old age or for whatever reason, when the body becomes uninhabitable, the living being is forced to leave. And when the living being leaves—the living being is the source of life. The body does not have its own life. The life that the body manifests is lent to the body by the presence of the spiritual being. And when that being leaves, the body now manifests what is called death. You, the spiritual being, do not die. You never die. You cannot die. But when you leave, the body dies or manifests symptoms of death. And this cycle—

I mean, what’s determining things is the state of consciousness (we’ll get into this a little bit in a minute) of the person at the time of death. Your state of consciousness practically determines what will happen. If one is maintaining material attachment, then one will be bound to this cycle of repeated birth and death.

So I’ll read a couple of verses from the Bhagavad-gita, since this is part of a series called the Wisdom of the Bhagavad-gita. And this is from the second chapter where Lord Krishna is speaking to Arjuna, a great warrior prince, and He says:

“As the embodied soul continually passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change.” [Bhagavad-gītā 2.13]

This is quite an extraordinary statement, and it touches on what science has come to discover. In science, in biology and cellular biology, you learn that your body is subject to constant change, not just in the way it looks and its size, but also, the matter, the material elements, the atoms that are making up your body are constantly being replaced. Within seven years, and actually closer to five years, every single atom that makes up your body becomes replaced.

When you look at a—somebody who shows you a—or you ask them, “Do you have a picture of when you’re a baby or a little infant?” and somebody may have a picture and show it to you; then you ask them, “So where is that body now? Where is it?” Most people will say, “Well, this is the same body, it’s just grown bigger.” Bam! Wrong answer! No, that’s not true. That’s a misperception. The body is actually gone, and the body that you have on now is completely different material elements. All of it, every single—even your brain, every single part of it has been replaced. And it’s kind of like confusing because, “But I’m the same person!”

Yes, that’s a wonderful discovery. You are the same person, but you are not the body; because if you were the body, every time it went through complete change, there would be a loss of identity. And that doesn’t happen. Your identity, the personal experience, the things that happen, continue and go on.

So if you look at me, I’m already a really old guy in my 70s, and it’s like I can remember, I can actually remember, when I was six months old. I was born here in Hamilton this time around, and I can remember when my parents moved into a state house out in Fairfield. We lived in a transit camp for a while, I can remember that. And when I was like six months old we moved into this transit house, and I can remember being in my mother’s arms, and there was some guy working near the stairs. The house was on piles, and so they were putting, what do they call it, the thing around the base of the house, you know, where the air vent can get through, whatever you call that, the guy was fixing it, and he stood up and looked at me. And I can still remember it.

And I can remember when my father—the yard was just all dirt, and I can remember when he put the grass in and used a roller to roll it all flat. So I was only like six months old, and it’s sort of like, maybe that’s not very common, I don’t know. But I had a little body. I can remember, you know, as a little kid climbing on my father. He’s lying on the floor listening to the—a footy game, the All Blacks, getting all excited, and we’re climbing all over him. And we thought it was like, me and my brother, it was just like such fun climbing on this massive body, my dad.

Later my body grew taller, bigger. I went through different changes. I became a teenager, matured into a young adult, and then further into an actual adult. Then I went through a period of middle age. My body started transforming and changing. It now gets all weird and out of shape and everything, and you get all this fat in weird areas on your body. Now I’m in an old age period. So I can remember all those changes and transformations.

And what’s being pointed out in this verse in the Bhagavad-gita—and it’s just like a brilliant example—this statement is that,

“As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change.” [Bhagavad-gītā 2.13]

So, this is the big picture. If you can put on and change bodies, even within this lifetime, and these are different bodies, what’s to prevent the idea of you accepting another body after this one is old and used? There’s no logical reason why that couldn’t happen.

And then it states that one, “a sober person is not bewildered by such a change.” This word “sober” here, think of it like an intoxicated person that lost the plot. “Aaah, I’m daaa daaam” [impersonating drunk] somebody that’s just drunk or high on drugs and whatever they’re thinking in their mind is just coming out their mouth, and they’re just saying all kinds of stuff, and they’re bewildered by what’s going on around them, whereas a sober person sees things in a different way. And so this is being used for a person who is intoxicated by the material perspective as opposed to a sober person who has a spiritual perspective.

Then the next verse I’ll read:

“As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, the soul similarly accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones.” [Bhagavad-gītā 2.22]

So this is, you’ve gone from now the example of the changing body in this lifetime to now the idea like in this life—like when you’re going to take a shower, you’ve been out working or whatever, your clothes are all dirty, you take it off and either drop it on the floor, or you put it in a laundry basket or whatever and go into the shower. And when you come out and dry off, you put on clean clothes. And that’s sort of like, okay, that’s a clear example. And it says you can apply this understanding also to what is called reincarnation, the accepting of new bodies and giving up the old and useless ones.

So, the question would normally arise to a person is, okay, well what’s driving this? What’s driving this change from one body to a next? What’s behind it? What’s the mechanism? What—why is it actually taking place? And there’s two reasons for it. One is the reason associated with what’s called karmic debt or karmic fruit; and the other one has to do with desire.

So, the ancient sages, they really understood karma. Karma means action, it doesn’t mean anything else. That’s it. It means action. Most people refer to the result of some action, especially when you’ve done something bad, and then something bad happens to you, they call that the karma. But that’s actually the fruit of your karma, the karma phalam, the result.

So the understanding was, in life, every single action that you take and the speech that you use incurs a result. There is a consequence that you will not be able to escape. For every action there will be a reaction, and that will always be there. And so, the understanding was that, in my lifetime, I have hurt so many people, I have also done good things, I have done all of these things; and as a result of that, I’ve accumulated a lot of debt. Some of it is good, and some of it is not good. Some of it I will experience in this lifetime, but some of it will be carried over into succeeding lifetimes. And it is this karmic debt that’s driving the rebirth, because you have to pay, you have to receive the result of all action, good or bad.

And so because of this, you will see that everybody in the world is born in a unique circumstance. Some people are born into wealth. Some people are born into extreme poverty. Some are born into great beauty or handsomeness. Others are born to have a disfigured or ugly body. Some people have extraordinary health. Others are born with great disease or sickness that might carry on through their life. You have different opportunity for education. You get different opportunity for generating wealth, for all kinds of things. And the majority of all of this is going to be determined by previous action that you have taken.

And it was for this reason that the people from ancient times were very focused upon making the future better. The actions that I take now, consciously and thoughtfully, and my speech, can make my life infinitely better going forward. And so it is intelligent, rather than to be impulsive and just pulled by the mind and desires and say and do thing with no control over my own mind, was not smart. They understood this idea of karmic debt, and how you can determine your future, both in this lifetime and in the next.

So the other thing, apart from karmic debt angle, there was the question of your state, as I mentioned earlier, the state of consciousness of a person at the time of death. What is it that you are immensely attracted to? What is it that you desire? What is it that you’re deeply attached to? These things will be at the forefront of your mind when it is time for you to leave your body—even if it happens in an accident. The time factor becomes almost irrelevant. You might have heard of people that have had like near-death experience. There was a crash or something, and they say it’s like everything slows down, and it’s like it’s in slow motion. And it’s like your whole life, they say, flashes before your eyes. You see everything in your mind. You suddenly remember all the stuff, things that you said and did and interactions that you had, and it all happens just like in a split second.

And so at the time of death of the body, when you are leaving, all of these things will arise, and those which are strongest and at the forefront will have a tremendous effect on what’s going to happen to you now, what kind of body or where you are going to go from this point forward.

Audience member has question…

Okay, long as it’s quick, otherwise we normally do a Q&A at the end, and I encourage people to, but go ahead, sure.

Audience member: Inaudible

Acharya das: Yeah, okay, really good topic. We’ll hold on to it for the Q&A. Your question was concise, my answer is going to be a little bit long. Thank you.

So, an understanding was that the body that you move into, part of what’s driving it, is the opportunity for you to try and fulfill all of these desires and all of these things that you are deeply attached to. And of course, this means the binding of the living being to the material world in this repeated cycle of birth and death called samsara.

So reading another verse, also from the Bhagavad-gita,

“The living entity in the material world carries his different conceptions of life from one body to another as the air carries aromas.” [Bhagavad-gītā 15.8]

Again, it’s just an amazing analogy to try and help people understand. You know, you can be sitting somewhere, and somebody with perfume or BO, or a smelly animal or whatever, comes by, and you could be sitting there not even looking, and suddenly you’ll get a whiff. And it’s sort of like, okay, that thing that you’re smelling, that aroma, it’s actually come floating through the air. It’s real, it has substance, although it’s very fine, and it’s been carried by the air. And so the example here is that the living entity in the material world “carries the different conceptions of life from one body to another as the air carries aromas.”

I saw a cartoon once, but you also see it in life, and in the cartoon you had like a married couple in their very early life, and the guy was all, strong and macho and up out in front, and the woman was all kind of like [imitates timidity] following along behind. And then they go through these changes; and then in the end you’ve got this old dude with a cane, and he’s all wimpy, and now the wife is all tough, and “Come on, come on! Let’s go, let’s go!” And she’s now the one assuming the lead role and manifesting the—there’s been this change in roles. And it’s indicative of what actually transpires and part of what’s driving reincarnation.

There’s another well-known—an ancient text called the Bhagavat Purana, and this Bhagavat Purana actually gives a most extraordinary example. The example that it uses is like a caterpillar, who is on one leaf and wants to move to another leaf. What does the caterpillar do? You see it bends its body, and then it stretches out, while its back legs are still attached to the leaf. It hooks onto this leaf, pulls it close and then lifts the other one off, moving over to a new leaf. And so in this verse it says,

“The caterpillar transports itself from one leaf to another by capturing one leaf before giving up the other. Similarly, according to his previous work, the living entity must capture another body before giving up the one he has. This is because the mind is the reservoir of all kinds of desires.” [Bhāgavata Purāṇa 4.29.76-77]

So that’s kind of like, wow, this is serious food for thought. When I post this, I will put the verses in the comments section. You may want to look at them or copy them and use them as something to reflect on once in a while, because they’re very helpful.

So the same point, pretty much, spoken about in a later chapter of the Bhagavad-gita, the 15th chapter.

“The living entity, thus taking another gross body, obtains a certain type of ear, tongue, and nose and sense of touch, which are grouped about the mind. He thus enjoys a particular set of sense objects.” [Bhagavad-gītā 15.9]

So—and just take these kinds of examples that I might share now in the context in which I’m attempting to share them, not so much as hard truth, but they give us some entry into understanding. So in human life, just as an example, you cannot engage unlimitedly in, for instance, eating. If you just endlessly eat and eat, your body gets sick and die reasonably fast, or at least way shor—your lifespan in that body will be hugely reduced. But you have another species, for instance, hogs or pigs, a capacity to consume enormous amounts of just anything and everything, and it doesn’t affect them. It doesn’t make them sick. They just get bigger, and more healthy and robust. And so that’s one example.

You know, the understanding was that the human life was meant for the purpose of self-realization and God-realization. The distinction between the human body and all other forms of body was this fine point. But if one does not take up that responsibility, it means that there is a neglect or even a misuse of this wonderful gift, the human form. If instead we simply seek to endlessly engage in certain varieties of activities that our bodies may not be so suitable for, then that is something that sets us up for transmigration, particularly into lower species of life, to have a body that’s more suitable to fulfill desires that we may have cultivated.

At a retreat last year, the end of last year—and this is to do with the question of, “Isn’t reincarnation like a second chance where you get to learn more of life’s lessons?” And I’ll say, yeah, in a very indirect way, that can be the case. But actually, the process of transmigration is such that the experience of death and the experience of development within the womb and birth is so traumatic for the living being, it’s like your memory is almost erased. It’s so deeply suppressed, you don’t remember anything. So it’s kind of like somebody that had a bad car accident, and they were comatose for three months or six months. And then when they come out of a coma, they don’t remember anything. I mean, they just don’t remember anything. That’s kind of like what it’s like to move from one body to the next. There is no, except in some very rare cases, there is no real clear recollection of things that have come from before.

So the idea of a second chance, it’s not like, you know, you—this idea was actually meant to be prevalent at the time when reincarnation was outlawed in Christianity: there was an idea that, “Why should I worry about spiritual pursuits now? Why don’t I just eat, drink and be merry? And next time around, I’ll get serious.” And that was considered really—that’s not a good foundation to build a religion on because it’s like nobody wants to take it seriously. And so this was meant to be, according to at least some scholars, one of the reasons it was also rejected.

The reality of forgetfulness is actually probably a little bit of a worry, because it tells us that we should utilize the time that we have and this body that we have, and not waver, that we should build a meditation habit, we should cultivate a lifestyle where we’re making good choices, we’re manifesting kindness, we’re engaged in loving service to God and to others, because that means we’re utilizing the time, and we’re not taking a risk of becoming forgetful.

Also in the Bhagavat Purana, which I had read the caterpillar verse from, there is a verse that states:

“When the living entity passes from the present body to the next body, which is created by his own karma, he becomes absorbed in the pleasurable and painful sensations of the new body and completely forgets the experience of the previous body. This total forgetfulness of one’s previous material identity, which comes about for one reason or another, is called death.” [Bhāgavata Purāṇa 11.22.39]

So, as I mentioned, the experience of death is one of the big things that brings about this quite shocking change in consciousness and our forgetfulness of everything.

There is a very ancient story of a king who retired from the job of being the king and went to live alone in an ashram in a forest and engaged in spiritual activity in preparation for his impending death, and while there, came upon a young fawn, baby deer, that it’s mother had been killed by an animal of prey, and it was sort of like—and he felt so sorry for it, he took care of it. He brought it to his ashram, and he’d feed it, he watched out for it and everything. But then he started developing these habits of always checking if it’s okay, everything’s doing all right. So he’s engaged in his activities of worship and meditation and everything, but he’s constantly just— just have a check if it’s all right, “You okay over there?” you know. And in this way he built an affection.

And then it’s described that when he was leaving his body, he was fearful of what’s going to happen to this small animal, and because that’s where his mind was, he ended up taking birth as a deer. But he was blessed with an ability to remember what had happened. And he spent one lifetime in a deer’s body, just aimlessly walking around the forest, seeking out yogis and sages and hanging out around them, waiting for death to occur, and he moved on to a human form again.

And there’s this just amazing story about what happened to him and this amazing encounter he had with a king. So his name was Jada Bharat. And so maybe in the description that I—when I post this talk, I’ll give a link to that talk. If anybody is interested, they can check that out.

So maybe the final point that I’ll make in relation to this, “Is it an endless cycle? Are we stuck on this treadmill where we never get off?” Because it’s almost like you can’t control your desires, you can’t control your mind, and if that’s going to be determining where you go and what happens, it seems like, oh my God, it sounds pretty hopeless.

When I was a very young monk, 19 years old, I became quite fascinated and a little bit fearful, well not fearful, deeply concerned about a couple of Sanskrit terms that were used in relation to the living beings, the spiritual beings. They describe in the Vedas that are categorized as what’s called nitya–siddha and nitya–baddha. And nitya-siddha means those who are eternally liberated and free, existing within a spiritual dimension, and the other word means, nitya means eternal, and baddha means to be bound, to be chained, to be fettered, those who are eternally bound.

And the idea—I mean one of the reasons that I kind of lost interest in Christianity as a young person, I could not embrace the idea of eternal condemnation. That didn’t sit well with me at all. I couldn’t imagine that if there was such a thing as God that He would be so heartless and cruel that there would—somebody would be eternally condemned. And so when I heard this term, nitya-baddha, it’s like my hair stood up, and I’m going, “What? What?” You know, my ears pricked up, and this sounds a bit weird or scary.

And so when I first met my spiritual master, he—somebody had introduced, and he told me to come and sit beside him on the floor there. He was sitting. He asked me, “Do you have any question?” And I told him, “There’s something that’s really troubling me. It is this term, nitya-baddha, to be eternally conditioned or bound to this world.” I said, “What does it actually mean?” And he smiled. And he said, “Actually, eventually, all spiritual beings will return to the spiritual realm. But some may be tethered or implicated in material activity and bound to this world for so long that you cannot calculate the time. It is so long. Therefore, this term is used for those living beings.” So that was just like, phew, okay, I can handle that, that that makes sense to me. I can appreciate that.

I think one of the really important takeaways to the talk tonight is really this appreciation that we have this wonderful capacity. It is called free will. You make your own choices. Even if you are hypnotized, even if you are intoxicated and drawn into things, as people are with their phones and social media and stuff, still, you are the one making a decision. And every action, every decision that you make has a consequence that you cannot escape. You cannot escape.

And if you want to live a wonderful life, you have to learn how to make really good choices and to take charge of your life, rather than your mind and whoever’s controlling it, influencing your mind, determining your life and what you’re going to do. You have to learn how to become so strong and independent and make really, really good conscious decisions and choices, so that you can produce wonderful outcome for yourself, to be able to live both a happy and peaceful life and to leave this body in a peaceful—in a state of grace. That is what the offer is.

And of course, the process by which we—one of the main processes, like what we’re engaging in now, we broadly call yoga wisdom, that there are eternal spiritual truths that are of enormous importance and taking some time once in a while to bathe our mind in spiritual truth, it uplifts us and it helps us, it directs us, it gives us—it helps us to shape our goals, to be, have more intention in in our life. But the thing that will bring the biggest change is the engagement in the meditation process, without even understanding why and how.

It’s just like any dirty thing placed before the sun and constantly subjected to the sun’s rays, it becomes purified. In a similar manner, the consciousness of the soul, the consciousness of the living being, when it is bathed in the powerful rays emanating from the spiritual sun, these rays are called these spiritual sounds, transcendental sounds, sometimes referred to as holy names, that simply by being exposed to them, one’s heart and mind will be purified. One will—it will dissipate the fog and make it so you can increasingly see with clarity, and this will give you an ability to become more, not only mindful, but then to exercise your free will in a way that brings happiness to your life, a very conscious thing.

I have given some other talks on the subject of reincarnation which—I will also put some links at the end of this talk. I will put some links to some of those. If people want to explore things a little bit more deeply then please try to take advantage of those resources.

Thank you very much.

So, I will invite you to—we will have a little chant, and then after the chant we will do the Q&A, and your question will be first on the list. Anybody that has a question feel free to make a little note on your phone, just so you don’t forget.

So I’ll chant the Maha Mantra, the Hare Krishna Mantra, this one here.