Cyclical Lives

This story isn’t really a “story” at all.  Rather it is about an epiphany that I had concerning some of the Buddhist teachings that I have been studying lately. 

Over the years that I have read about Buddhism I have been puzzled about the issue of cyclical life, and karma.  One of the reasons that I find Buddhism to be attractive is that is not a religion in the usual sense of the word.  It is based upon observations, rather than a belief in a divine creator.  I am attracted to the Toltec style of spirituality for the same reason.  Because they are both basically experiential in nature, they both have a lot of common themes, questions and answers.  However, Buddhism has the strange belief in cyclical lives that leaves me puzzled. 

I see no reason to believe in something that is totally unknowable (and not available to be experienced), such as a divine creator, or multiple lives.  These types of beliefs in myths don’t add anything to my spirituality, and in fact just seem to detract in many subtle, and not so subtle, ways.

I realize that at the same time as I say this I am willing to entertain beliefs in many other unknown things such as energy connecting living beings that can be used for communication and healing.  I am also more than willing to “call” for support from the “great spirit” or the “spirits of the four directions.”  Admittedly, this seems to require a belief in some unknowable things.  The difference is that I don’t think they are unknowable, only unknown.  I can test them and maybe even experience them.  I seem to be able to experience energy flowing, but not the spirits.  However, I am currently of the opinion that the idea behind things like that sprites of the directions isn’t that they are beings of some sort, but rather that they represent these invisible energies which may, or may not, exist.  I have come to the conclusion that everything that we experience is in our mind (it is all a kind of dream).  If I experience something, that has a lot of value to me – even if I know that it is “only in my head” – after all, that is all that we get, what is in our heads.  I’ll suppose that I will keep playing with these ideas until such time as I either know that they really do exist, that they don’t exist, or I finally die.

Then it hit me, it really doesn’t matter whether or not the myth of a cyclical series of lives is true in the strict sense, it is true in an even more fundamental sense that impacts all of us all of the time.  The idea is connected to the concepts of impermanence, karma and who we are (or more importantly, are not)

It has become clear to me that we are not who we think we are, we keep changing.  The “I” that was me twenty years ago is certainly not the “I” of today. I feel like there is a connection or continuity since childhood, but when I think back to those times it is as if I am looking back not only to a different time, but to a different person.  Some days seem to go from day to day and I stay the same (it seems like I stay the same because the changes are small, but I keep changing nevertheless).  Then something might happen to make a large change, all at once.  Perhaps meeting a new person, or losing an old friend.  The outcome is that we feel different, and ARE different – we are a new person.  The “I” is no longer the “I” of just a short time ago.  We have been reborn in a real way.  So that is the trick, we are reborn again and again, in a cyclical nature.  The idea of a cyclical rebirth makes sense, even if you don’t want to buy into the concept of a cycling beyond death.  It does indeed seem that we are in a recurring cycle of birth and death of “I”, which can be changed on any of the cycles.  This can be thought of as on the smaller time frame of our current lives, or on the time from of infinity.  From my point of view, the span of my life is effectively infinity.

I had already worked out in my mind the idea of karma can be thought of as within this life, or within the unknowable multiple lives beyond death and before birth.  It seems to me that karma clearly works within a lifetime.  Everything we do changes the world that we will experience next.  Not only that, but it moves out from us like the waves from a stone dropped into a pool, effecting others further and further away from us and that instant.  These then change others, which then send waves back toward us, impacting us once again.  The point is that we all impact each other, which impacts and changes our future lives (or future “I’s”).

We can indeed stop being caught in a life pattern that is just a continual cycle of pain and suffering, we can change who the next “I” is going to be if we truly desire to do so.  Not only that, but karma has something to do with how we can do that.  For example, if we decide to lead a “moral” life, it will change the karma that spreads from us, which will change the karma that comes back to us from others, which will change the things around us and interactions with others, which will change who we are.  We will then have been reborn into a new incarnation of “I” which is closer to what we desire – living in happiness and full of love.

Once it dawned on me that the messages of Buddhism can be applied to this life (the one between my birth and my impending death), I found that I didn’t have to worry about whether or not the myth of multiple lives is true or not.  It is clearly true from my vantage point, I can see and experience that it is true within this life.  That is good enough for me.