I had a brief discussion with a friend who appreciates many aspects of the Buddha’s teaching. But he rejects the idea of rebirth and samsara vatta.
I wrote:
I think it seems comforting to believe that after this life all ends.
Then nothing really matters too much. Yes there could be prison, bankruptcy , poverty, disability etc. Yet It is over in less than a hundred years, even if those are very hard years.
But a hundred years is just a fingersnap of time and rebirth should be taken seriously. As the Buddha said, " I saw beings with little dust in their eyes and with much dust in their eyes, with keen faculties and with dull faculties, with good qualities and with bad qualities, easy to teach and hard to teach, and some who dwelt seeing fear and blame in the other world." Mn 26
That doesn’t mean we should obsess about the dangers of future lives. Learn to see more about the present moment so that rather than fear of the future there becomes a corresponding interest in the moment, the ayatanas, in place of aversion.
King Yama says to them, ‘Worthy man, did it not occur to you—being sensible and mature—“I, too, am liable to be born. I’m not exempt from rebirth. I’d better do good by way of body, speech, and mind”?’
He says, ‘I couldn’t, sir. I was negligent.’
King Yama says to them, ‘Worthy man, because you were negligent, you didn’t do good by way of body, speech, and mind. Well, they’ll definitely punish you to fit your negligence. That bad deed wasn’t done by your mother, father, brother, or sister. It wasn’t done by friends and colleagues, by relatives and kin, by ascetics and brahmins, or by the deities. That bad deed was done by you alone, and you alone will experience the result.’
But why do I have to suffer for what someone else did in a past life?
There is santati, continuity, - each citta conditions the next.
Say some akusala kamma done in this human life conditions the rebirth consciousness in the animal kingdom- like a frog. The frog will have no memory of his past ill deed but still he lives out that life enduring all the dukkha associated with such a existence.
And in the ultimate sense there is no ‘someone’:
vism. XVII The endless chain of aggregates,
Of elements, of bases too,
That carries on unbrokenly
Is what is called “the round of births,”
vism xvii 167And with a stream of continuity there is neither identity nor otherness.
For if there were absolute identity in a stream of continuity, there would be no
forming of curd from milk. And yet if there were absolute otherness, the curd
would not be derived from the milk. And so too with all causally arisen things.
And if that were so there would be an end to all worldly usage, which is hardly
desirable. So neither absolute identity nor absolute otherness should be assumed
here. [555]
168. Here it might be asked: “If no transmigration is manifested, then after the
cessation of the aggregates in this human person, that fruit could be another
person’s or due to other [kamma], since the kamma that is the condition for the
fruit does not pass on there [to where the fruit is]? And whose is the fruit since
there is no experiencer? Therefore this formulation seems to be unsatisfactory.”
Here is the reply:
In continuity the fruit
Is neither of nor from another;
Seed’s forming processes will suit
To show the purport of this matter.
When a fruit arises in a single continuity, it is neither another’s nor from
other [kamma] because absolute identity and absolute otherness are excluded32
there. The formative processes of seeds establish the meaning of this. For once
the formative processes of a mango seed, etc., have been set afoot, when the
particular fruit arises in the continuity of the seed’s [growth], later on owing to
the obtaining of conditions, it does so neither as the fruit of other seeds nor from
other formative processes as condition; and those seeds or formative processes
do not themselves pass on to the place where the fruit is
“What now, Master Gotama: Is the one who acts the same one who experiences (the results of the act)?”
[The Buddha:] “(To say,) ‘The one who acts is the same one who experiences,’ is one extreme.”
[The brahman:] “Then, Master Gotama, is the one who acts someone other than the one who experiences?”
[The Buddha:] “(To say,) ‘The one who acts is someone other than the one who experiences,’ is the second extreme. Avoiding both of these extremes, the Tathāgata teaches the Dhamma via the middle:
“From ignorance as a requisite condition come fabrications…