Reincarnation
You are what your deep, driving desire is.
As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is,
so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.
-Brihadaranyaka, IV. 5
**
Over the past few weeks, some friends and I have started practicing yoga with some regularity. I decided to do some background research on the practice and found my way to the local bookstore and a collection of ancient Hindu texts called The Upanishads. One of the basic tenets of Hinduism is the notion of reincarnation, which has found its way, in one form or another, into many other worldviews. The basic idea is that if you live a good life, you come back as a higher life form, until you eventually attain harmony with god. If, on the other hand, you lead a bad life, you’d come back as a lower life form, setting yourself back on the path to harmony. Simple enough.
When I first heard the notion of reincarnation way back when, it sounded pretty hokey. However, as I learn more and more about how the universe operates, reincarnation sounds a little less absurd. Either through digestion or decay, dead things regain life among the living, don’t they? That’s elementary science.
Biologist Richard Dawkins gave a lecture on the queerness of the universe in which he retold anecdotes originally given by Louis Walcott and Steve Grand, both of which speak to the point above, I think.
Louis Walcott once remarked, “Every time you drink a glass of water, the odds are that you will imbibe at least one molecule that had passed through the bladder of Oliver Cromwell.” It’s true. It’s simple probability, I’m told. There are just far more molecules in a glass of water than there are glasses of water or bladders in history. Of course, this point isn’t particular to Oliver Cromwell of glasses of water. It is also quite probable that the last breath you took shared an atom with John the Baptist’s fig tree or Ghengis Khan’s first bowel movement, for instance. From this perspective, the inter-connectivity of all life forms, living or dead, seems all the more probable. Of course, the fact that this information was explained to me by very credible scientists does not do anything to make it any less mind-blowingly-absurd.
In another thought experiment, Steve Grand asks you to remember an event from our childhood that you distinctly remember. Maybe you can see, smell, touch, and taste whatever it is that you are thinking about. You may even feel like you are really there. Of course, you aren’t really there. Here’s the kicker – you were NEVER really there, atomically speaking. Not a single atom that is presently in your body today was also in your body at the time of the memory. Not ONE SINGLE ATOM! The “you” at the present, just like the “you” from the past, is more like a point on a wave, in which matter comes together only for a brief instant before moving on to something else. Amazing, no? Perhaps, like me, you were moved to ask, well who has my atoms now? Or, to whom did my atoms once belong?
As these and other ideas are swimming around my head, I purchase the book and head outside. As I’m crossing the street to the parking lot, I notice that a couple about 20 feet over to my left is looking down at the ground and pointing. They are having a conversation about something that is on the ground. As they walk away, I grow interested to find out what they were looking at. Right at that moment, a voice comes from behind me to ask, “Is that a turtle crossing the road?” In an effort to save the turtle from getting run over, I walk over to pick it up and help it across the road. Of course, it’s beyond me where the turtle may have come from: there’s no water anywhere near here and it’s a miracle that it’s made it all the way across this enormous parking lot without getting run over already. Only, when I make it over to my new turtle friend, I discover, to my shock and amazement, that it’s not a turtle at all, but, get this, a lobster! So, here I am, standing in the middle of the road, a book on reincarnation under my arm, fending off traffic, trying to help a crustacean make it up the curb, unable to fathom the sequence of events that may have led to our lives intersecting in this manner. By this point, a crowd has gathered and people are calling people on their cell phones and taking pictures, which only adds to the absurdity of it all. Meanwhile, I can only wonder what the heck this guy must have done in his past life to end up a tiny lobster in a Barnes and Nobles parking lot. Talk about drawing the short straw in the game of reincarnation!
The story ends with some fellow good Samaritans getting a cup of water and another volunteering to take him to a nearby creek. With a little help from strangers, unity and order was restored among all of god’s little creatures. However you want to look at it, scientifically or religiously, we’re all made of the same stuff:
As the same fire assume different shapes
When it consumes objects differing in shape,
So does the one Self take the shape
Of every creature in whom he is present.
Point is, be nice. Even to lobsters. Because, if there’s one thing we can learn from science, it's this: chances are, you're already a lobster (to some degree), and even if you're not, you'll be one soon enough.
As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is,
so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.
-Brihadaranyaka, IV. 5
**
Over the past few weeks, some friends and I have started practicing yoga with some regularity. I decided to do some background research on the practice and found my way to the local bookstore and a collection of ancient Hindu texts called The Upanishads. One of the basic tenets of Hinduism is the notion of reincarnation, which has found its way, in one form or another, into many other worldviews. The basic idea is that if you live a good life, you come back as a higher life form, until you eventually attain harmony with god. If, on the other hand, you lead a bad life, you’d come back as a lower life form, setting yourself back on the path to harmony. Simple enough.
When I first heard the notion of reincarnation way back when, it sounded pretty hokey. However, as I learn more and more about how the universe operates, reincarnation sounds a little less absurd. Either through digestion or decay, dead things regain life among the living, don’t they? That’s elementary science.
Biologist Richard Dawkins gave a lecture on the queerness of the universe in which he retold anecdotes originally given by Louis Walcott and Steve Grand, both of which speak to the point above, I think.
Louis Walcott once remarked, “Every time you drink a glass of water, the odds are that you will imbibe at least one molecule that had passed through the bladder of Oliver Cromwell.” It’s true. It’s simple probability, I’m told. There are just far more molecules in a glass of water than there are glasses of water or bladders in history. Of course, this point isn’t particular to Oliver Cromwell of glasses of water. It is also quite probable that the last breath you took shared an atom with John the Baptist’s fig tree or Ghengis Khan’s first bowel movement, for instance. From this perspective, the inter-connectivity of all life forms, living or dead, seems all the more probable. Of course, the fact that this information was explained to me by very credible scientists does not do anything to make it any less mind-blowingly-absurd.
In another thought experiment, Steve Grand asks you to remember an event from our childhood that you distinctly remember. Maybe you can see, smell, touch, and taste whatever it is that you are thinking about. You may even feel like you are really there. Of course, you aren’t really there. Here’s the kicker – you were NEVER really there, atomically speaking. Not a single atom that is presently in your body today was also in your body at the time of the memory. Not ONE SINGLE ATOM! The “you” at the present, just like the “you” from the past, is more like a point on a wave, in which matter comes together only for a brief instant before moving on to something else. Amazing, no? Perhaps, like me, you were moved to ask, well who has my atoms now? Or, to whom did my atoms once belong?
As these and other ideas are swimming around my head, I purchase the book and head outside. As I’m crossing the street to the parking lot, I notice that a couple about 20 feet over to my left is looking down at the ground and pointing. They are having a conversation about something that is on the ground. As they walk away, I grow interested to find out what they were looking at. Right at that moment, a voice comes from behind me to ask, “Is that a turtle crossing the road?” In an effort to save the turtle from getting run over, I walk over to pick it up and help it across the road. Of course, it’s beyond me where the turtle may have come from: there’s no water anywhere near here and it’s a miracle that it’s made it all the way across this enormous parking lot without getting run over already. Only, when I make it over to my new turtle friend, I discover, to my shock and amazement, that it’s not a turtle at all, but, get this, a lobster! So, here I am, standing in the middle of the road, a book on reincarnation under my arm, fending off traffic, trying to help a crustacean make it up the curb, unable to fathom the sequence of events that may have led to our lives intersecting in this manner. By this point, a crowd has gathered and people are calling people on their cell phones and taking pictures, which only adds to the absurdity of it all. Meanwhile, I can only wonder what the heck this guy must have done in his past life to end up a tiny lobster in a Barnes and Nobles parking lot. Talk about drawing the short straw in the game of reincarnation!
The story ends with some fellow good Samaritans getting a cup of water and another volunteering to take him to a nearby creek. With a little help from strangers, unity and order was restored among all of god’s little creatures. However you want to look at it, scientifically or religiously, we’re all made of the same stuff:
As the same fire assume different shapes
When it consumes objects differing in shape,
So does the one Self take the shape
Of every creature in whom he is present.
Point is, be nice. Even to lobsters. Because, if there’s one thing we can learn from science, it's this: chances are, you're already a lobster (to some degree), and even if you're not, you'll be one soon enough.
posted by Donkey Boy at Thursday, September 21, 2006
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