No Souls, Please. We're Buddhists.
I regret that didn't get a chance to see the film Unmistaken Child when it was in nearby theaters. The film is a documentary of the search for a tulku, a reborn master in the Tibetan tradition. I have read interviews with the filmmaker, Nati Baratz, which encouraged me to think Baratz understands that "rebirth" in Buddhism is not the transmigration of a soul to another body.
However, if Baratz did make that point in the film, it was missed by some reviewers. Ty Burr writes in the Boston Globe,
To accept what happens in “Unmistaken Child,’’ you don’t have to believe in reincarnation. You do, however, have to believe that the people in this movie believe in it - that the idea of a soul transmigrating from a dying Buddhist lama to a newborn boy is part of the conceptual stew in which they and their society swim every day.And a headline writer for the Seattle Times writes, "'Unmistaken Child' gives extraordinary access to the search for a reincarnated soul." The reviewer, Tom Keogh, does not mention souls, however.
I understand that there is a persistent folk belief in the reincarnation of souls throughout much of Asia, so in one sense what Ty Burr wrote is true. But the monk who takes on the quest of finding his master's rebirth in the film has a more subtle understanding, I suspect. Anyway -- no souls, please.
I don't expect to live long enough to see the day when Western popular culture "gets" Buddhism, but I suppose there's nothing else to do but continue to explain it.
Comments
Indeed, there is no soul in the literal Buddhists sense of the word. The early Canons of the Hinayana strands of Buddhism, written down in the Pali scriptures and the Agamas explicitly speak of “rebirth”, a mental continuum that “jumps” from one life to another.
The Himalayan interpretation of “reïncarnation” is a continuation of the Vedic literature. We must understand that the first more or less indiginous commentators that would influence whatever Buddhist teaching arrived in Tibet, Bhutan and adjacent states were born in and around the area that now comprises Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government in exile. They were educated into Saivism, the worship of the Hindu god Siva. Another “foreign” teacher that would leave his mark all over the Himalayan states was Atisha. Atisha was born into a princely family in Bengal, and he too received his early religious education in Vedism, i.e. Hinduism (just as Buddha did, by the way, but he challenged it).
This mix ‘n match is what Himalayan peoples received and accepted, and indeed Asians feel comfortable with the concept of reincarnation, since all folk religions that preceeded Buddhism, or live along with it have teachings about spirits wandering about and influencing your life.
To them the Buddhas and bodhisattvas are living entities as is demonstrated by the recent words of a famous Taiwanese master: “we will pray to the Buddhas and bodhisattva” (that we will not fall prey to H1N1).
Hi, I guess you can still watch the film, and than rewrite your review….
Try UnmistakenChild.com for theaters…
Thanks
bhiksuni Ratana, others would counter that the Himalayan region received Buddhism at the peak of Indian Mahayana thought. The lack of alacrity in the subject of reincarnation is understandable though, isn’t it? Maybe we just grasp these concepts too tightly.
Fitz
But, really, why is there a tradition in Tibetan Buddhism of searching for, say, a new incarnation of the Dalai Lama? If that is not belief in reincarnation, then what else is it? A belief in a sort of concentrated rebirth of characteristics in one person? I can understand Buddhist belief in reincarnation on a folk level, but searching for a new high lama is performed by the scholars, the learned class. Just a question.
David, Even in Tibetan Buddhism what is reincarnated is not a soul. However, I’m not the person to explain the Tibetan understanding in rebirth, as I have no personal experience in that tradition.
There was a forum discussion of this very question awhile back, and reading the discussion is the best explanation I can provide.
Thanks, Barbara, for that link. I too only have (beginner’s in my case) experience in Zen, but interestingly, the Roshi of the Rinzai Zen center I go too is a woman married to a man who follows Tibetan practice and offers Tibetan services once a week at the center. Now I am inspired to try out his service and, perhaps, to pose this question about rebirth in Tibetan Buddhism to him. I would bet there are not many other zendos that have Tibetan prayer flags hanging over the doorway.
This passage from Dudjom Lingpa’s Nang-jang (Refining One’s Perception) points to an aspect of the Tibetan understanding of rebirth, etc.
“At no time throughout the beginningless succession of lifetimes has there ever been actual birth. There has been only the appearance of birth. There has never been actual death, only the transformation of sensory appearances, like the shift from the dream state to the waking state. All sensations — seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt as forms, sounds, odors, tastes, and tactile sensations by the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin — are merely the mind being conscious of its own projections (Tibetan: rang-nang), without their ever having even a hair’s tip of existence as something else.”