Do Atheists favour Buddism over the other faiths?

Rebirth vs. Reincarnation

Although these terms are often used interchangeably, there is a significant conceptual difference between the two. On the whole, Buddhists believe in rebirth while Hindus, Jains, and some Christians believe in reincarnation. Strictly speaking, reincarnation means the assumption of another body by a permanent, eternal self (the Hindu notion of atman or the Christian notion of soul). Most Buddhists do not believe in a permanent self (anatman or anatta, without enduring self) but believe human consciousness (the "I" or self) dissolves at death and that only a subtle mindstream remains. The mindstream carries with it karmic imprints from prior lives (but not memories and emotions associated with prior lives, unless the person is a highly developed spiritual practitioner, in which case reincarnation is possible) and it is this subtle mindstream that conjoins with a new life-form after death. Thus, rebirth does not mean an identifiable human being assuming a new human body. Moreover, in Buddhism, rebirth is not always accomplished in human form. Depending on karmic circumstances, a human being can be reborn as an animal or as a being in any of the upper or lower realms.

http://www.angelfire.com/yt/fairtibet/rebirth.html

One seems equally as fantastic as the other to this poor deluded atheist.

1 Reply

@edgarblythe,

While it's true that most lay Buddhists believe in the "suble mindstream" you mentioned, such was never taught by the Buddha, if the Pali Canon is correct. That's a later rationalization that arose many years after the Buddha's death. In the Abhidhamma Pitaka, if I recall correctly. That belief is a part of Mahayana doctrine (which includes Tibetan Buddhism), which contains a few points that contradict what the Pali Canon presents as the Buddha's teachings.

In my opinion, the Mahayana movement arose partially out of a desire to retain some semblance of reincarnation, thus the emphasis on the concept of the "subtle mindstream." This makes it indistinguishable from reincarnation, and is not what the Buddha taught. Mahayana has more followers these days than Theravada, though, so the various and sundry doctrines of its many branches can be considered to be "Buddhism," despite the fact that's so obvious to scholars of Buddhism that they are in some respects antithetical to the teachings found in the Pali.

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@FBM,

FBM wrote:

While it's true that most lay Buddhists believe in the "suble mindstream" you mentioned, such was never taught by the Buddha, if the Pali Canon is correct. That's a later rationalization that arose many years after the Buddha's death. In the Abhidhamma Pitaka, if I recall correctly.

I agree.

Even if there was a subtle mind stream it would denote an atman of sorts. The Buddha would have clearly made it out if there was some such thing.

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@Krumple,

Yep. He went to great lengths to emphasize that nothing passes from one life to the next, but people do love to cling to the prospects, however slim and imaginary, of an after-life.

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There is a site of Pali Canon online that presents the teaching in English. Reading the Buddha's words, one can easily see rebirth as figuring in what he is telling Ananda and the people owning the web site seem to conclude the same.

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@FBM,

It is funny that a little while back there were people on this tread insisting that the Buddha does teach reincarnation. When I spoke up and said no, they shot down my responses as if I didn't know anything on the topic. Now that we get more posts supporting my claim that the buddha does not teach reincarnation, these people are no where to be found.

It shows that people would rather react to the flock mentality of perceived knowledge rather than take the time to actually look it up themselves. This is why a high level of ignorance persists in our culture because people accept things without investigating them.

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@Krumple,

Well, if there are still any doubters, maybe they could look up some scholarly materials on the Buddhist concept of anatta, which contradicts the myth from the Vedas that each human has an inherent atman (soul, spirit, etc).

For the Buddhist, the goal is to stop the cycle of rebirth altogether, not to rejoin any sort of cosmic One-ness or Brahman or anything else. To be fair, from reading just a narrow selection of the Sutta Pitaka suttas, it is easy to come up with something similar to reincarnation. However, if you (or your teacher or your order) don't cherry-pick and instead give equal weight to all the suttas, you'll have no choice but to see that rebirth is pretty much the exact opposite of reincarnation. Remember, the Buddha of the Pali Canon spent a lot of time telling Brahmins why their system was wrong.

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@FBM,

What you say is interesting but can you explain it in light of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_enlightenment

The four stages of enlightenment in Buddhism are the four progressive stages culminating in full enlightenment as an Arahat.
The four stages are Sotapanna, Sakadagami, Anagami and Arahat. The Buddha referred to people who are at one of these four stages as noble people (ariya-puggala) and the community of such persons within the bhikkhu-sangha as the noble sangha (ariya-sangha).
The teaching of the four stages of enlightenment is a central element of the early Buddhist schools, including the Theravada school of Buddhism, which still survives.

E.G.

Once-returner
Main article: Sakadagami
The second stage is that of the Sakadāgāmī (Sanskrit: Sakṛdāgāmin), literally meaning "one who once (sakṛt) comes (āgacchati)". The once-returner will at most return to the human world one more time. Both the stream-enterer and the once-returner have abandoned the first three fetters. The stream-enterer and once-returner are distinguished by the fact that the once-returner has weakened lust, hate, and delusion to a greater degree. The once-returner therefore has fewer than seven rebirths. They may take place in higher planes but will include rebirth in the human world at most only once more. Once-returners do not have only one more rebirth, as the name suggests, for that may not even be said with certainty about the non-returner who can take multiple rebirths in the five "Pure Abodes".
==================================================================

Also:

The Mahayana's deepest view is expressed in "The Heart of the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom" and it says that reality has no characteristics at all so that would seem to mean that reality doesn't have the characteristic of rebirth or reincarnation but these are only taught as 'stepping stones' to an understanding of reality that is ineffable. This seems at odds with what you have said about the Mahayana teaching i.e. that they believe in rebirth and/or reincarnation. The Heart Sutra seems to contradict what you have said perhaps you've made a mistake and are mixing provisional teachings with ultimate teachings.

1 Reply

@able2ask,

First of all, just to be clear, if what I wrote before led you to believe that I'm criticizing Mahayana in favor of Theravada, then I didn't express myself thoroughly. Both sport major doctrinal and pedagogical divergences from what the Buddha of the Sutta Pitaka taught, based on my direct observations of both lay and ordained people in both schools.

Anyway, your questions are good and legitimate. I think the first can be resolved by understanding what is called the Buddha's "skill in means," which you alluded to with the phrase "provisional teachings." In order to teach to those steeped in the Vedas, Vedic language and imagery is the most appropriate means to provide the best stepping stone to greater understanding. (You seem well enough informed that I probably don't need to explain that in more detail.) The dhamma being a raft for crossing, but to be laid down after the crossing is done, etc.

The Mahayana position you mention could be explained in much the same way. An advanced practitioner could comprehend sunyatta in a way that a beginner or intermediate could not. In any event, I didn't say that ALL Mahayana doctrines contradict the Pali Canon, and sunyatta is not one of the Mahayana doctrines that I mentioned as doing so. "True Self" is the one I mentioned, and I could have included the soteriological aspects of the Pure Land sect's doctrines. If you examine the Pali teachings closely, you'll see that they are anything BUT soteriological, I think.

Regardless of what the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra says, (Mahayana) Buddhists here in Korea and elsewhere are taught a version of the dhamma that leads them to believe that they personally will experience an afterlife. If there are monks who understand it differently, they don't teach it to the lay people. Perhaps this is also skills in means, but both Theravadin and Mahayana lay people are led - even encouraged - to believe in afterlives that they will personally experience, despite the Buddha's exposition on anatta.

When I was a novice monk in Thailand, one of the English-speaking Thai monks who had been very friendly to me was explaining a dhamma talk given the evening before by the abbot (ajahn) to a group of laypeople visiting our monastery. Part of it had to do with securing a favorable rebirth. So I asked that monk what was reborn, considering the doctrine of anatta. He couldn't answer, except to say, "I'm sure the ajahn knows." After that, he wasn't so friendly to me anymore. I felt sorry about that, and thought I should've just kept my mouth shut about it.

Both Theravadin and Mahayana laypeople, and some monks, at least the ones I've talked to, profess a belief in a version of rebirth that is for all practical purposes indistinguishable from reincarnation. No one that I've talked to, lay or ordained, spends much - if any - time trying to understand anatta or even give it the role in the training that the Buddha of the Pali Canon alloted for it.

1 Reply

@FBM,

As you have said you are a former Buddhist monk.

I'd like to ask a few questions... you of course can answer or not but I'd at least like to ask them.

Are you still a Buddhist? If you are/aren't what do you believe will happen at the moment of your death?

Is there only one life or is birth, life and death an illusion. A concept about reality that is mistaken... it never happens we just suffer from believing that appearances are real when in fact they are projections of reality believing in a self that doesn't exist?

If there is only one life how does the result of practice or no practice make enough difference in one short life... why bother if you're not too unhappy most of the time?

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@able2ask,

able2ask wrote:

As you have said you are a former Buddhist monk.

I'd like to ask a few questions... you of course can answer or not but I'd at least like to ask them.

Are you still a Buddhist? If you are/aren't what do you believe will happen at the moment of your death?

Is there only one life or is birth, life and death an illusion. A concept about reality that is mistaken... it never happens we just suffer from believing that appearances are real when in fact they are projections of reality believing in a self that doesn't exist?

If there is only one life how does the result of practice or no practice make enough difference in one short life... why bother if you're not too unhappy most of the time?

Hold on ask. You are trying to strong arm the concept of multiple lives. With your lines of questions you are essentially saying since you can not answer these questions then there must be multiple lives.

The Buddha was specifically asked about multiple lives. What he did to answer it was go right back to the ego/self being a non substantial. You can't have multiple lives if there is no self to begin with. This is the problem. You have to assume there is first a self, and that this self experiences one life after another. No. It is a wrong view. You have to deal with this ignorance of self existence first before you can understand why there are not multiple lives despite all the talk of "stream enterer" and "once returner".

1 Reply

@Krumple,

Krumple wrote:

You just want to keep people rehashing nonsense because you don't care about what is true.

In this case, no I don't. If the truth or falsity of a factual claim doesn't affect my conclusion, I might as well ignore it.

The question in this thread of yours is: "Do atheists favor Buddhism over other faiths?" My answer, speaking as one individual atheist, is that I don't. I am an atheist because I'm anti-superstition. Buddhism, like other religions, is into superstition. You affirm the general proposition that it is, and only deny that it is into the particular superstition about reincarnation. I do not need to argue this point with you, because even if you were right on it and I was wrong, it wouldn't change my answer to the thread's question. So for purposes of this thread, no I don't care.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

The question in this thread of yours is: "Do atheists favor Buddhism over other faiths?" My answer, speaking as one individual atheist, is that I don't. I am an atheist because I'm anti-superstition. Buddhism, like other religions, is into superstition. You affirm the general proposition that it is, and only deny that it is into the particular superstition about reincarnation. I do not need to argue this point with you, because even if you were right on it and I was wrong, it wouldn't change my answer to the thread's question. So for purposes of this thread, no I don't care.

I am also an atheist and I am not a buddhist but I have studied buddhism extensively. My over all point was that people use poor or lack of knowledge to build a case against. Why not learn something about it and then attack it where it truely is weak instead of rehashing the same ignorance over and over?

I do agree that there is superstition within buddhism. But almost all of it comes from cultural baggage and misunderstanding the teachings within buddhism itself. No one goes far enough to actually study to see where these lines are drawn. They just assume a cultural baggage is the result of buddhism instead of it being something that persisted before buddhism was adopted into it.

Even though I am an atheist, I think buddhism has a huge amount of wisdom that can be utilized in a secular way. You can completely drop all the superstitious aspects of buddhism and walk away with a tremendous understanding of the human condition and what motivates people and how to look past certain aspects that are usually difficult to get around. No one says you have to accept all the superstition to be a buddhist.

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@able2ask,

able2ask wrote:

As you have said you are a former Buddhist monk.

I'd like to ask a few questions... you of course can answer or not but I'd at least like to ask them.

Are you still a Buddhist? If you are/aren't what do you believe will happen at the moment of your death?

Labels like "Buddhist" and so forth are worse than useless, in my opinion. They distract the mind from what is directly perceived and serve to facilitate reification. It doesn't bother me to be called either "Buddhist" or "former Buddhist." Your choice.

As far as I can tell, at the moment of death, the organized functions of the body cease to function, and the ongoing chain of phenomena that arise dependant upon those functions cease. Like turning off a TV, more or less.

Quote:

Is there only one life or is birth, life and death an illusion. A concept about reality that is mistaken... it never happens we just suffer from believing that appearances are real when in fact they are projections of reality believing in a self that doesn't exist?

If I understand you correctly, that sounds about right. What new comes into existence when a child is born? What is destroyed when a person dies?

Quote:

If there is only one life how does the result of practice or no practice make enough difference in one short life... why bother if you're not too unhappy most of the time?

This question presupposes that there is a single, discrete entity that resides with the human body from birth to death. Nobody, to my knowledge, has been able to find such a thing, whether it's a homunculus or a ghost in the machine. That, I think, is the whole message of anatta. We reify mental abstractions based on experience, and mistake the reifications as being equally real as that from which the emergent properties arise. That's the illusion of being a Self among other Selves. But when you look closely, there is no Self, never was. Not one that resides in these dirty bones in this life, nor one to experience an afterlife.

If you're not too unhappy most of the time, if you're satisfied with your experience of life, then I don't see any reason why you'd bother with Buddhist training at all. Most people don't, including many Buddhist laypeople and even some monks/nuns. If you don't feel the need for it or don't have an interest in it, don't do it.

In my discussions with Western people, many of them assume that the Buddha was evangelical in a way similar to proponents of the Abrahamic traditions tend to be. But a close reading of the original suttas shows that this isn't the case. The Buddha never went around proselytizing like that. Instead, he and his monks waited until they were approached and questioned before explaining the dhamma. Furthermore, the Buddha gave different instructions to householders about how best to conduct their lives. Those instructions didn't typically include meditation unless the householder was asking about it. In short, the Buddhist attitude isn't based on the assumption that Buddhist training is best for everyone. If you feel motivated to investigate and experiment with it for yourself, go for it. If you don't, don't.

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@Krumple,

Krumple wrote:

...Even though I am an atheist, I think buddhism has a huge amount of wisdom that can be utilized in a secular way. You can completely drop all the superstitious aspects of buddhism and walk away with a tremendous understanding of the human condition and what motivates people and how to look past certain aspects that are usually difficult to get around. No one says you have to accept all the superstition to be a buddhist.

Indeed. Well said, Krumple. I whole-heartedly agree.

1 Reply

@FBM,

One of the few times I agree with Krumple; buddhism doesn't try to judge others, but to improve their own lives by respecting all life forms.

My wife is a buddhist, and all my siblings are christians married to christians.

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@cicerone imposter,

I'm glad you two found a little common ground! Wink

Buddhism, like any other human endeavor, will not likely ever have its ideals lived up to by the majority of its adherents, but I'm fond of the goal of liberation from the dissatisfactions and stresses of life by one's own efforts, without appealing to the supernatural.

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@Krumple,

Krumple wrote:

Even though I am an atheist, I think buddhism has a huge amount of wisdom that can be utilized in a secular way.

That's quite possible. The same is true of Chrisitanity. So how would this cause me to favor Buddhism over Christianity?

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Krumple wrote:
Even though I am an atheist, I think buddhism has a huge amount of wisdom that can be utilized in a secular way.

That's quite possible. The same is true of Chrisitanity. So how would this cause me to favor Buddhism over Christianity?

Well this is where we might differ. In my personal opinion christianity doesn't discuss the mind as extensively as buddhism does. There are also teachings within christianity that contradict buddhist teachings. Not only that but buddhism seems far more in line with modern science than christianity. So I am much more inclined to lean towards buddhism because of that.

Topics like no-self, impermanence and conditioned arising are not found anywhere within christianity. These three topics are very powerful tools once they are understood. The fact that they are not found within christianity is just one example of how chrisitianity has missed some things that are very useful and worth the time to learn.

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@Krumple,

Krumple wrote:

Hold on ask. You are trying to strong arm the concept of multiple lives.

Krumple, you've jumped to the wrong conclusion. 'Multiple lives' is a conceptual tool used to help others before they understand that reality is ineffable... for some it is a necessary 'stepping stone' because emotions not just the intellect are at play and the emotions can prevent understanding and 'skillful means' is used to help manage the emotions.

If you re-read the conversation between FBM and myself you should be able to see that this is my position.

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Do Atheists favour Buddism over the other faiths?

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