Abstract
I should like in this paper to explore the idea of reincarnation as a metaphysical and moral notion shedding interpretive light on our experience. I shall argue that it provides a plausible and coherent account of our moral and spiritual life. Being concerned with its appeal at a general philosophical level, I shall not go into an exegesis of the idea as articulated in different philosophical and religious systems. Rather, I will borrow freely from these contexts to construct a version of it, that in its generality seems to me worth considering as a view about the nature and destiny of human life, and specifically about the evolution of consciousness.
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Notes
Quoted in K. N. Jayatillike, Karma and Survival in Buddhist Perspective ( Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1969 ) pp. 55–5
J. Gunther Pratt and Naomi Hintze, The Psychic Realm: What Can You Believe? (New York: Random House, 1975) quoted in Sylvia Cranston and Carey Williams, Reincarnation: A New Horizon in Science, Religion and Society (New York: Julian Press, 1984) pp. 49–69, from which a good deal of the information in the paragraph is taken.
John Hick, Death and Eternal Life ( New York: Harper & Row, 1980 ) p. 309.
Yajnavalaya-Smrti, I, pp. 349–51, quoted in S. Chatterjee The Fundamentals of Hinduism: A Philosophical Study ( Calcutta: Dasgupta, 1960 ) p. 87.
Huston Smith, The Religions of Man (New York: Mentor Books, 1959) chapter 2.
Cf. J. Bruce Long, ‘The Concepts of Human Action and Rebirth in the Mahābhārata’, in Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty (ed.) Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980 ) p. 40.
Cf. Lawrence Babb, ‘Destiny and Responsibility: Karma in Popular Hinduism’, in Charles F. Keyes and E. Valentine Daniel (eds) Karma, An Anthropological Inquiry ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983 ) pp. 163–81;
Kathleen E. Gough, ‘Caste in a Tanjore Village’, in E. R. Leach (ed.) Aspects of Caste in South India, Ceylon and North-West Pakistan ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960 ) pp. 11–60.
E. B. Cowel, trans, The Buddha-karita SBE 49 ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894 ) p. 145.
Cf. Edward Conze, Buddhist Thought in India (Ann Arbor Paperbacks, 1967) pp. 121–58; James P. McDermott, ‘Karma and Rebirth in Early Buddhism’, in W. O’Flaherty (ed.) Karma and Rebirth op. cit., pp. 165–92.
E. B. Cowel (ed.) The Jâtaka, or Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births ( London: Luzac & Company, 1957 ).
Karl H. Potter, Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, Advaita Vedânta up to Samkara and His Pupils (Princeton University Press, 1981 ) p. 531.
Zenkei Shibayama, Zen Comments on the Mumonkan ( New York: Harper & Row, 1974 ) p. 67.
Ian Stevenson, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation ( New York: American Society for Psychical Research, 1966 ).
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© 1989 Claremont Graduate School
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Prabhu, J., Glucklich, A. (1989). The Idea of Reincarnation. In: Death and Afterlife. Library of Philosophy and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10526-7_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10526-7_3
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