Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [53]
Many current Western teachers including myself agree that traditional belief in rebirth is not necessary to be a genuine Buddhist, and that an agnostic position on rebirth teachings is fine until one discovers certainty within oneself. I personally feel the most important criteria or characteristic of Buddhist spirituality is a sincere commitment to the possibility of spiritual awakening and enlightenment, combined with an open heart, an inquiring mind, and daily awareness practice based on ethics, meditation, and wisdom.
DIFFERENT KINDS OF REBIRTH
There are actually four different ways of interpreting rebirth:
1. Life to life, in sequential and linear time (For example, I die and I am reborn.)
2. Intentional rebirth, in linear time (Masters and reincarnate lamas like the Dalai Lama vow intentionally to keep coming back to fulfill their mission to liberate all beings till the end of samsara or suffering.)
3. Spiritual rebirth (Total renewal and personal transformation in this very life.)
4. Moment-to-moment rebirth, in the timeless present—the eternal now (This moment, impulse, or thought arises and passes away.)
EVERY MOMENT, THERE IS A NEW YOU
I would like to remind you that science tells us that almost every cell in your body changes every seven years. You don’t have the same body you did ten or twelve years ago; none of us do. You are not exactly the same person you were yesterday; none of us are. Do you remember your dreams from last night, and how intensely involved you were with what you experienced in them? What happened to that person—the dreamer—those feelings, those dreams? What happened to the person you were a month ago or a year ago, or ten years ago?
I vaguely remember how I was twenty or more years ago. I remember my “past lives” as a high school jock, as a kid in Long Island, New York, and as a college student in Buffalo during the sixties. People always ask questions about who or what they were in a past life. Some people even go to “regression therapists” for hypnosis to see if they can remember. The fact is that if you want to know what you were like in a past life, just scrutinize how you are right now.
If you’re not comfortable with the traditional Buddhist concept of rebirth—if you think it’s just somebody else’s dogma—why not consider it this way: In this life you’re reborn every moment. Every single second is a rebirth, a time when we re-create ourselves and our self-concepts. Who knows about after we die, but look at your experience now. It’s like the movie Groundhog Day. Every day you wake up; it’s the exact same day, and you can recreate it according to your interpretations. Or you can continue to relive the same daily drama—as Yogi Berra said, “Déjà vu, all over again.” Can you change? Where will you go, what will you do? Will it be different?
We are all drawn to the familiar; when something or someone resonates familiarity, our conditioning responds to what modern psychologists describe as a return to the patterns of your family of origin. However, you can break the pattern; you can change the next moment; you can do something different, something enlightened; something creative, imaginative, and fresh; something compassionate and wise. That’s how you get off your karmic gerbil wheel and transform your existence. That’s rebirth in the immediate here and now. Tibetans believe that spiritual rebirth now is the best preparation for the rebirth that occurs after death.
Milarepa, Tibet’s best known yogi and poet, lived almost a thousand years ago. He practiced meditation and yoga in solitude in desolate Himalayan caves. His devotion was so great that he has continued to serve as an inspiration for generations of spiritual practitioners. Milarepa