Yes, you’re right, I have an analytical way of looking at things. I’m glad you stumbled in, but I’m curious now how you happened to find me. I don’t post here too much anymore, rather I spend more time with my main blog, which is more secular in nature. Thanks for pausing long enough to comment. I appreciate it.

To begin, yes, you are right, mine is a Theravada perspective, which is what I’m most familiar with. And this isn’t the first time I’ve been called out for using absolutes like “always.” I should know better, because always and never are synonyms for sometimes. Anyway, what I intended to express in this essay was how I saw rebirth differently after reading TB’s book. What struck me is the idea that the teachings on rebirth is a strategy for explaining how karma works. That makes sense to me. However, I neither accept rebirth as an article of faith that must be believed in order to be a good Buddhist, nor do I reject it as an archaic bit of mythology that must be abandoned in light of scientific knowledge. What I do accept is that actions matter and every action has a result—or string of results—even if we don’t recognize it for what it is. I can also easily accept that a “generalized rule of behavior that has some exceptions is every bit as useful to work with, over the course of a lifetime, as one that works every time…”

Incidentally, I too have a great appreciation for Stephen Bachelor and the work he’s done with putting contemporary Buddhism in a historical context and separating what the Buddha actually taught from what was generally accepted as true during his day.

I came across your blog accidentally. No I don’t think the world is telling me anything:) Well sometimes it tells me to buy stuff.

I really liked your post on reincarnation, thank you.
What I was taught about that by a Zen teacher (Maezumi Roshi) was that to not know was a good answer as well. I am scientifically oriented as I believe you are. I thought you might like to hear that . Again thank you you fine post.

A quick side-step: Lawrence Kohlberg postulates with some support stages of moral development folloed up by James Fowler as “Stages of Faith” (quotes for book title) and Robert Kegan as stages of “ego development” (scare quotes as there’s controversy around what is being defined). An interesting change is between making ethical choices based on consequences to oneself and making ethical choices based on a shared humanity.

We can all point to folks we know who live by one or the other of these orientations. This seems to me to be one of the problems a worldview with ethical pretensions (buddhism, christianity, etc.) needs to address: who are we appealing to? Those motivated by self-interest, those motivated by shared humanity or both.

Classical Brahmanic karma seems to me to ground ethics through self interest (per star’s entry). I’ll leave this here to simmer a bit. What does it bring up for you folks?

In MN 117 the Buddha describes views that are associated with karma and its results as “tainted views” and says that they result in acquisitions (I trust Bhikkhu Bodhi’s reading of this as “another round of the 5 aggregates in the future”). It seems fairly obvious, after a little putting this path into practice, that concerning ourselves with what we will be in the future is a hindrance because it causes us to cling to and try to understand things about how things will be for (some aspect of) us in the future (whether that aspect is a soul, a self, or something unnameable is moot, it is still in some sense myself I am worrying about).

You asked “is it necessary to know?” Exactly: what decisions will we make differently? How will we treat others differently if or if not there are future lifetimes? If we will treat people differently, where is right action, either way?