Assuming that there is such a thing a soul, and that yours had past lives, or will have future ones would you care ? How much, if you do ?
I wouldn’t. I certainly don’t recall any such lives, and my memories are the most important part of what makes me, me. If you could prove to me that I had a soul with past lives, it would be like proving to me that a particular iron atom in my blood once was part of Alexander the Great; mildly interesting, but that’s all. Reincarnation is functionally equivalent to having no soul at all, in my eyes.
Wow. Some Buddhist scholars throughout the ages would be in total agreement with what you said (some modern-day adherents, not so much), Nagarjuna most notably.
I agree that even if someone could prove reincarnation is real I wouldn’t be happy about it. I’ve never seen the appeal of reincarnation. If you think your current existence is lousy, I guess it might be cool to imagine you used to be royalty or something…but I really am attached to my current identity and way of life. The idea of being reborn with no memory or recognition of who I used to be is actually pretty frightening to me.
First, to answer the OP’s question…I don’t care. It just is…I can’t explain it. I attach more importance to making decisions in the here and now.
lavenderviolet, actually one of the scariest conversations I had with my father was when I asked him if I would get to be with my family in the next life and and he was like “uh, no, that’s not how it works. We will never see each other again.” I mean, that sucks, as you pointed out. The thing is that reincarnation isn’t supposed to be “comforting” in my religion (Hinduism)-hence the teachings on how to reach self-realisation and escape from it.
It depends. Is my reincarnation random or does it depend on my actions in this life? If what I’m reincarnated as is totally random, then I wouldn’t care much. If some form of karma existed, though, I’d do my best to do whatever it isto get good karma and avoid bad karma. I don’t want a sucky reincarnation, after all.
I think it also might make me more…complacent, maybe, or fatalistic? After all, if I’m in the position I am now because of my actions in a past life, why bother trying to change things. It’s my duty to take what comes because of whatever bad stuff I did in a past life.
Wouldn’t care? Are you serious? The existence of a soul is, as you so often point out, completely at odds with everything we know about physics and biology. Proving that a soul exists would be one of the most significant discoveries in human history! Would it change how I live? Probably not. Neither would proof of the existence of intelligent life on other planets, but it would sure as hell change how I think and feel. Either one would be a spectacular discovery that would make me thrilled to be alive to witness it and in awe of humans’ ability to discover te world in which we live!
Well, yes, from a physics point it would be interesting; THAT part I would care about. But I’d “care about it” the way I care about the Crab Nebula - it’s interesting, but not personally relevant. From my viewpoint, proving reincarnation amounts to proving that souls exist, but don’t matter or do much of anything.
If I die and am reincarnated as a different person with no memory of any of my previous lives, how does that still make him me? Even if one believed in the existence of souls, one presumes that my soul contains my personality and memories. If my personality and memories are erased and everything that makes me me wiped clean, how is it me at all? If it’s determined by karma, then it’d be more reasonable to say that my karma affects some different future person who will be born after I die, who will otherwise have no relation to me whatsoever.
Well, like I said, I doubt it would change how I live. But I’d certainly feel more personal interest in it than in a new discovery about the Crab Nebula.
Personally, I don’t think my “self” comprises only my memories. There are lots of things about my life I don’t remember, but they still affect me. I guess I’d take the discovery that I had a soul that had experienced past lives the same way I would take the (hypothetical) discovery that I was adopted. It would be something I don’t remember that wouldn’t change who I am, how I feel about my parents, etc. But it give me greater insight into who I am and how I became that person. That is knowledge I would value for its own sake, and it would be a particularly significant and perspective-changing discovery in that area. It would completely change my perception of myself, even if my behavior and my values stayed exactly the same.
Depends on what I would come back as. There are just too many people for reincarnation to be species-specific. I’d hate to come back as a slug. Of course, I might not feel so bad about it once I was one.
It wouldn’t make the slightest difference to me. In fact, as Yumblie observed, it is not even a meaningful question. If I could be reincarnated with all my memories intact that would be different. But since I have no interaction with my “soul”, why could I possibly care?
As with any discussion involving souls: what’s a soul?
Since we can’t remember anything about previous lives, apparently souls are just some concept totally different from personality or memory, so I don’t see how it matters to me personally that they’re reused.
Having some kind of proof that souls exists would be interesting, if only because that would hopefully clear up the definition of soul. Souls themselves would probably be pretty boring, though.
My understanding of reincarnation is that we keep coming back until we finally learn how to do whatever it is that we are supposed to do to make us good people.
But I also understand that when we come back, we don’t remember our past lives and have to start from scratch again.
As long as the human population keeps growing, it’s no problem! Every one of us could pop into a new womb within minutes after death, and we’d still need “new souls” to make up the shortfall.
But if Earth’s population stabilizes, or God forbid falls, that’s another story. We’ll be queueing up in soul purgatory to wait our turn, bitching about birth control and abortion. And if our species goes extinct . . .
In Buddhism, rebirth (not reincarnation) is important because its an incentive for people to continue on the path and to develop good karma. Even then its not important the way new agers think its important (learning from past lives) as each life is new and unique and there’s no soul that follows, just one’s karma.
That said, if you divorce the path to nirvana and karma, its just a curiosity.
Also you dont need to be a theist to be a buddhist. Many flavors of buddhism are not theist and can be argued to be atheist.
Well, since I’m a Christian and look forward to something I regard as much BETTER than reincarnation, yes, I’d care. I’d be disappointed that reincarnation was the best I could hope for.
I’d be very happy to have hard evidence that I, as an entity, do not necessarily have a finite duration of existence. I’ll take a periodic reset every now and again over (most likely) total annihilation any day.