Life after life?

Do we reincarnate after death?

Plato seemed to think so, or at least he describes the cycle of rebirth with a lot of detail in "The Myth of Er" (the thrilling conclusion of Book 10 of the Republic). Buddhism and Hinduism both teach reincarnation. But is it true?

I'm inclined to think that there can be no such thing as empirical proof — maybe I should say "empirical proof while in this life." 😀 What I mean is that when I look at the people who believe in reincarnation (on the one hand) and people who disbelieve (on the other), I don't think they even agree on what "empirical proof" would look like. Whatever happens in the world, whatever possible observations anyone might make, I think the partisans of each side would reply, "You see? That goes to show I was right all along." So I don't think it is a question that can be solved in an empirical way.

What I find absolutely fascinating, though, is to reflect how the doctrine of reincarnation functions pragmatically as a source of ethical advice. For example: one time or another we have probably all heard someone say, "You should act ethically because, if you hurt other people, you'll incur a lot of bad karma." If you ask what that means, the answer is very often something like this: If you steal from people in this life, you will be stolen from in your next life. If you cheat on your spouse in this life, you will be cheated on in your next life. If you murder someone in this life, you will be murdered in your next life. And so on. Since nobody wants those bad things to happen to them in the future, the advice is not to incur that implacable and inevitable karmic penalty by doing them to others right now.

But wait a minute. If I tell a child, "Stop poking your little brother or you'll have to go into time-out," the child knows what "time-out" is like and knows it's no fun. If society tells us, "Don't break the law or you'll have to go to prison," we know what that means. We can imagine what it's like to be sent to prison, and we know that it means we will suffer as a direct result of our earlier actions. If you tell me, "Don't steal from others or you will be stolen from in your next lifetime," it sounds like the same kind of advice as the other two. But is it? Think for a minute.

Who exactly is this person, the Future Me that risks being stolen from? Is this person male or female? (Let me pick one at random — I'll assume she's female — so that I can use pronouns and not have to keep repeating the phrase "this person" until I'm blue in the face.) What's her name? Where does she live? What language does she speak? And when someone steals from her, ... is she going to have any idea that it's merely an inevitable karmic retribution for my having stolen something in this life?

A few people claim they can remember past lives, but most of us don't. I don't remember having any past lives. That doesn't mean the doctrine is untrue, of course. But it does mean that when something bad happens to me, I don't immediately see the cosmic justice in it. And as for this woman we were just discussing, the Future Me, she really is somebody else according to how the world measures these things. She won't have my name, she might not live in my country, and she's sure not going to remember having been Hosea Tanatu in one of her earlier lives. In fact, there is absolutely nothing tangible connecting the two of us — nothing at all that the world can see and measure. She is a stranger to me. She is Somebody Else, pure and simple.

And yet I care about her, and I don't want her to suffer. In my mind, I see her as me ... well, sort of. "Me" as I will be in a few years, ... after I've gone through death and rebirth. But still basically me. And because I don't want bad things to happen to me, I will try to avoid doing bad things to others — at any rate, if I believe in reincarnation, or if (as is probably a lot more common) I'm not quite sure but want to hedge my bets.

In other words, the doctrine of reincarnation has the pragmatic effect of making me see the world through the eyes of others. What is it that parents and playground supervisors always tell little kids, to teach them that they have to play nicely with others? "How would you like it if somebody did that to you?" That's what we learn from the doctrine of reincarnation. We learn to see the world through the eyes of a complete stranger — someone that we are literally guaranteed never to meet in the flesh — and think, "That thing I'm about to do to someone else, ... how would I like it if somebody did that to me?"

The doctrine of reincarnation is, in effect, a playground supervisor for adults.

I have no idea whether reincarnation is actually true at a metaphysical level, or whether it is just one more of the thousand-and-one crazy things that people believe. But so long as it encourages us to see our actions reflected in the eyes of those others who are affected by them, ... so long as it does that, I'm all in favor. Sure, hell, sign me up.