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.There are a number of approaches that we can take to what we might call outlining the case for the reality of rebirth.One line which we might take would be to recall that in almost all the major cultures of the world, at one time or another, there had been a strong belief in the reality of rebirth.This is particularly true in India where the idea of rebirth can be traced back to the very earliest period of Indian civilization where all the major Indian religions, be they theism or atheism, be they schools of Hinduism or non-Hindu doctrines like Jainism, believe in the reality of rebirth.Similarly, in other cultures there has been a belief in rebirth, as for 90instance even in the Mediterranean world, there is a lot of evidence that belief in rebirth was quite common before and during the first few centuries of the Common Era.So the belief in rebirth has been an important part of the human way of thinking about one’s situation.Specifically, within the Buddhist tradition, we have the testimony of the Buddha on the matter of rebirth.On the night of His enlightenment, the Buddha acquired three varieties of knowledge and the first of these was the detailed knowledge of His past lives.He was able to recollect the conditions in which He had been born in His past lives.He was able to remember what His names had been, what His occupations had been and so on.Besides the Buddha’s testimony, His prominent disciples were also able to recollect their past lives.Ananda, for instance, acquired the ability to recollect his past life soon after his ordination.Similarly, throughout the history of Buddhism, saints, scholars and meditators have been able to recollect their past lives.Nonetheless, neither of these two arguments for rebirth can be expected to be completely convincing in a scientific and rational environment.So perhaps we need to look a bit closer to home so to speak, and here we get help from a very unexpected direction.Most of us may be aware that in the past twenty or thirty years there have been a huge amount of scientific investigations of the question of rebirth and these investigations have been pursued by psychologists and parapsychologists.Gradually through these investigations, we have built up a very convincing case for the reality of rebirth, a case which is developed along scientific lines.There have 91been many books published in which the details of these investigations have been described and discussed.One scholar who has been particularly active in this area in recent years is Professor Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia, USA.He has published findings on more than twenty cases of rebirth.Some of us may be familiar with the case of the woman who was able to recall her past life more than a hundred years before as Bridey Murphy in a foreign land which she had never visited in her present life.I am not going to go through these specific cases in detail because if one is interested in this scientific evidence for rebirth one can read about it for oneself.Nonetheless, I think we are now at a point where even the most skeptical of us will have to admit that there is a lot of circumstantial evidence in favour of the reality of rebirth.But in making the case for rebirth, we can look even closer to our own experience, and here we need to recall and examine it in the true Buddhist way to see what meaning we can distill from our own experience.All of us in this room have our own particular capabil-ities, our own particular likes and dislikes, and I think it is fair to ask whether these are all merely the result of chance.For instance, some of us are more capable at sport than others, some of us have a talent for mathe-matics, others have a talent for music, some of us like swimming, others are afraid of water.Are all these differences in our abilities and attitudes merely the result of chance? There are incredible peculiarities in the nature of our experiences.Let me take my own case.I was born in a Roman Catholic family in the United States [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.There are a number of approaches that we can take to what we might call outlining the case for the reality of rebirth.One line which we might take would be to recall that in almost all the major cultures of the world, at one time or another, there had been a strong belief in the reality of rebirth.This is particularly true in India where the idea of rebirth can be traced back to the very earliest period of Indian civilization where all the major Indian religions, be they theism or atheism, be they schools of Hinduism or non-Hindu doctrines like Jainism, believe in the reality of rebirth.Similarly, in other cultures there has been a belief in rebirth, as for 90instance even in the Mediterranean world, there is a lot of evidence that belief in rebirth was quite common before and during the first few centuries of the Common Era.So the belief in rebirth has been an important part of the human way of thinking about one’s situation.Specifically, within the Buddhist tradition, we have the testimony of the Buddha on the matter of rebirth.On the night of His enlightenment, the Buddha acquired three varieties of knowledge and the first of these was the detailed knowledge of His past lives.He was able to recollect the conditions in which He had been born in His past lives.He was able to remember what His names had been, what His occupations had been and so on.Besides the Buddha’s testimony, His prominent disciples were also able to recollect their past lives.Ananda, for instance, acquired the ability to recollect his past life soon after his ordination.Similarly, throughout the history of Buddhism, saints, scholars and meditators have been able to recollect their past lives.Nonetheless, neither of these two arguments for rebirth can be expected to be completely convincing in a scientific and rational environment.So perhaps we need to look a bit closer to home so to speak, and here we get help from a very unexpected direction.Most of us may be aware that in the past twenty or thirty years there have been a huge amount of scientific investigations of the question of rebirth and these investigations have been pursued by psychologists and parapsychologists.Gradually through these investigations, we have built up a very convincing case for the reality of rebirth, a case which is developed along scientific lines.There have 91been many books published in which the details of these investigations have been described and discussed.One scholar who has been particularly active in this area in recent years is Professor Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia, USA.He has published findings on more than twenty cases of rebirth.Some of us may be familiar with the case of the woman who was able to recall her past life more than a hundred years before as Bridey Murphy in a foreign land which she had never visited in her present life.I am not going to go through these specific cases in detail because if one is interested in this scientific evidence for rebirth one can read about it for oneself.Nonetheless, I think we are now at a point where even the most skeptical of us will have to admit that there is a lot of circumstantial evidence in favour of the reality of rebirth.But in making the case for rebirth, we can look even closer to our own experience, and here we need to recall and examine it in the true Buddhist way to see what meaning we can distill from our own experience.All of us in this room have our own particular capabil-ities, our own particular likes and dislikes, and I think it is fair to ask whether these are all merely the result of chance.For instance, some of us are more capable at sport than others, some of us have a talent for mathe-matics, others have a talent for music, some of us like swimming, others are afraid of water.Are all these differences in our abilities and attitudes merely the result of chance? There are incredible peculiarities in the nature of our experiences.Let me take my own case.I was born in a Roman Catholic family in the United States [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]