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This week I am sharing a letter I wrote to a friend after we were unable to finish our conversation at a local coffee shop. Well, ok, it wasn’t a letter, it was an email; that anachronistic photo above is, by its implication, a lie. 🙂
Dear DJ,
We never had the chance to resume our conversation, so I am writing you this letter. You were wondering about reincarnation and, though I don’t remember your exact words, I have heard you struggle with this question before. Essentially, you were asking, What happens to our consciousness after death, does it survive the transformation to another being, even if that future being doesn’t remember its past life?
I would like to propose that consciousness does not survive “reincarnation.” Consciousness is a product of the mind, which is a part, or a process, of the brain. The brain, as well as the rest of the body, as one can witness by watching any animal carcass by the side of the road, disintegrates after death, becoming water, oxygen, dinner for other hungry beings, gasses released into the atmosphere, heat, soil, etc. It may feel less exciting to think of things this way, that every cell, molecule, and atom of our body merely flies off and becomes something else, but billions or trillions of those particles will eventually find their way into other humans, as well as into animals, plants, rocks, air, atmosphere, and so on. This is reincarnation: We become EVERYTHING.
That can feel discouraging or thrilling. I find it thrilling.
The key is in how you respond to this truth: Narrowly (“How awful that I will cease to exist and not have a chance to re-experience being human”) or in an expanded and completely unconditioned way, a way that no one has even suggested to you before (until you began to study Buddhism), and that is this:
“My concept of “I” was wrong all along. It was too narrow. I thought that this body I see in the mirror was everything that I am. I became very attached to my body, to my self, and forgot that this self is like a leaf on a tree or a drop of water in the ocean. Just a tiny part of a whole that is absolutely, miraculously infinite (and not completely graspable or understandable by the limited brain that thinks in terms of me/mine).”
Remember this, that the thinking brain—and society—is tricking you into thinking that you—small you—are something special, irreplaceable, profoundly important. You are profound, but the you of which I speak is not the you that you might think, but rather the you that you really are, which is much, much bigger—big you.* Remember, too, that the part of you that thinks is small you, so it is actually impossible to think as big you. This subtlety is one of the stumbling blocks for people trying to grasp the true nature of self. (That’s why in meditation we focus on putting thinking aside.) But that does not mean that you are limited, only that you can’t completely know your infinite reality.
Think about it, DJ. Humans live for an average of 75 years. Our tiny planet is 4.5 billion years old. The universe is.... who knows how old? Probably without age as we understand it. So, how could a single human being out of the 8 billion that exist right now be individually unique in any profound way? An organism that might not even have existed if evolution had followed another of the unlimited paths it could have.
Oh, something is special all right. Something of which we are a part. Something much, much bigger.
And that is where we must take comfort. When we “die” we return to that it that is bigger. (Even that “return” is a mischaracterization because we already are it).
The human race is a single entity, just like the ocean is a single entity. It is comprised of trillions of parts but it is a single entity just the same. And that “singleness” actually includes all life and all existence, to a point that is simply unfathomable. (Remember that Universe is from the Latin universum, meaning combined into one, whole.) We have been conditioned to think of ourselves as individuals but we are really not. And it is in that respect that the wise Buddhist teachers say that we are never born and never die.
Because our minds have not been taught to think from this perspective, it can take years to retrain ourselves. Awakening to the true nature of self and reality is not instant. I don’t really believe in the idea of “achieving” enlightenment, Nirvana, a higher plain of consciousness, or any of that nonsense. It’s all in the neural pathways, which become so well worn that it is extremely difficult to see things in a new way. But it can be done—through meditation, mindfulness, reading what other wise Buddhists and mindful thinkers have learned (the Dharma), open-minded inquiry, an unwillingness to take anything on faith alone, and an absolute brutal honesty about ourselves.
Truth is truth. It’s right here in front of us, it doesn’t have to be “revealed” to us. There’s no secret that must be discovered or passed along from some special divine source. Reincarnation? Sure: You die. A baby is born. That’s reincarnation.*
Those are my thoughts for today. If you disagree, that’s fine. What do I know? I just like to keep in mind the words of my favorite singer/songwriter, Greg Brown: “This world ain’t what you think it is; it’s just what it is.”
Your friend,
Don
*BONUS—For those who love existential questions, please see the below link to a poem I really enjoyed by
, a poet who asks Why? with the skill of a linguist and the sensitivity of a sage.*Credit to Ajahn Chah for “small you” and “big you”
*Credit to Alan Watts for this paraphrased way of looking at reincarnation
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I keep coming up with this question when reading this, why were we born with a brain at all?
Are we here to learn our way back to the humble state of nothingness to actually understand we are in fact already part of everything?
What will happen to me after I die?
You mean the “me” that’s an illusion?
Yes.
It doesn’t exist now. It won’t magically appear in the future.
Right. I guess I mean my consciousness, my awareness. Will that exist after I die?
When you say “my” consciousness, are you saying that the illusion—the thing that doesn’t exist—is in possession of awareness/consciousness?
I guess I mean will awareness exist if I’m not here to witness it.
You mean is awareness eternal?
Yes.
“I” don’t know. But my sense is that awareness isn’t too concerned about this question. So if awareness isn’t concerned about it, why should “you” be?