Reincarnation And Buddhism

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Buddhism has two inter-related concepts, karma and rebirth. (Fundamentals) “According the doctrine of rebirth (samsara), a person’s life is the result of a long series of actions (karma) accumulated over a process of many lifetimes.” (Eckel 14) These concepts both revolve around the idea that a certain energy exists in the universe. An energy that can promote favorable or unfavorable circumstances, depending on the energy that is given out by an individual; and an energy that can claim a human life and give it to another.
Buddhists believe the position of an individual is a result of karma. Karma simply means action. Willful deliberate action in turn results in a reaction from the universe. (Fundamentals) “Karma is a kind of moral cause and …show more content…

Gill describes rebirth as “a casual link between one life and the next. Only a casual connection links one life to another, so our karmic accumulation conditions our next life.” (54)
Many people have a difficult time distinguishing between the idea of rebirth and reincarnation. The concept of reincarnation implies that each person has a soul. That soul is then passed along between bodies as a person dies and is reincarnated. (Hagen 42) “Buddha denied the existence of any soul that might reincarnate. What he did admit of was something slightly different, which we might call rebirth” (Snelling 40) The Buddha spoke of rebirth (the full term is “rebirth consciousness”), not reincarnation. With each new moment, the universe is reborn, so to speak. Rebirth consciousness is the awareness that this moment is not this (new) moment. The person here now is not the same as this person here (in this newly formed moment) now. Nothing persists. Nothing repeats. Nothing returns. Each moment is fresh, new, unique—impermanent. (Hagen 45)
What all of these concepts have in common is that they suppose some enduring entity—incarnate, here and now—that persists and, after it dies, disintegrates, only to reemerge as something else again.”(Hagen

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