The
last requirement you need to have before you engage seriously in the mind
journey is that you should have the inclination to believe there is a law of
kamma and a cycle of rebirth. You may have noticed that I use the mild tone of
words such as ‘should’ and ‘inclination’ and not ‘must’. Whether you want to
believe or not is entirely your choice at this stage. I just know that as you
progress along your journey and reach the gateway of wisdom, you will naturally
acknowledge the law of kamma and the cycle of rebirth as facts and not beliefs
anymore. I nevertheless bring this up as the last requirement for the first
part of this book because I can see that it will speed up your mind journey. It
can take away a high degree of doubt which is one of the main barriers that
tries to stop you from progressing further along this path.
The
cycle of rebirth is one of the most intriguing topics that people of all times
and places have debated. It is very much the same as questioning the
resurrection of Jesus Christ and his performing of miracles. No matter how much
we want to debate these issues, I do not believe that we can ever come to a
conclusion. There will always be three groups of people: the believers, the non-believers
and those who are not bothered.
My
attempt in writing this chapter is not about trying to find a conclusion to
this debate but to help a small group of people to make up their mind a bit
more easily as to whether they want to believe or not. It also has everything
to do with the mind journey. Talking from the Buddhist point of view, I must
say that believing in the cycle of rebirth is somehow necessary. That is
because the whole of the Tripitaka or the Pali canon is full of teachings that refer
to other sentient beings. It is a well known fact that the Buddha taught
heavenly beings or deities early in the morning and he had regular visits from
them. Now, how can you deal with this fact without any doubts? As you can see,
if you want to follow the Buddha’s path, it is very difficult to by-pass this
concept of rebirth.
This
is the first time that I have seriously sat down and talked about the law of
kamma and the cycle of rebirth at great length. The reason is that I too was
not convinced in the past. As a matter of fact, I ought to divide my belief
into three different stages.
When
I was a child, I wholeheartedly believed in the law of kamma, heaven and hell.
That was because my parents, teachers, monks and elders told me so. If I did
good, I would go to heaven and if I did bad, I would go to hell. That strong
belief became weaker as I grew up. By the time I was a student, just like most
students, I had to learn to think scientifically and logically. My belief was
weakened dramatically. The breaking point was when I knew Suan Mokkh and the
teacher who was responsible for my understanding in Buddhism. The teacher
refused to talk about heaven and hell as life after death but persuaded his
followers to pay more attention to what was happening in this lifetime and to
continue to do their good deeds. As a matter of fact, he didn’t accept or deny
point blank whether there was a heaven or hell as life after death. Instead, he
said heaven is happiness and peace of mind right now and hell is the grief,
sorrow and suffering in the mind too. He wanted us to recognise heaven and hell
as the good and bad activities in our minds. In not talking about the cycle of
rebirth as life after death, I had the inclination to believe that there was no
such thing called heaven or hell. It could be totally my wrong interpretation.
I
have to be very careful in putting any judgement on my beloved teacher.
Although his teaching caused me to wipe out my childhood belief completely
about the existence of heaven and hell, I can understand his motive behind it.
This Buddhist concept has been abused by corrupted monks and lay people and
used as a means to fulfil their own interest and wealth. Innocent people were
led to believe that if they didn’t make enough merit (tam boon), they wouldn’t
be going to heaven. Poor people became the example of those who did not make
enough merit in their past life. It is still very much the same now in Thai
society, which has allowed many bad monks to get away easily. I cannot blame my
teacher totally because I must admit that my scientific mind was also another
strong added factor which caused me to terminate my belief completely. Having
understood how corruption and exploitation work, I quickly and easily agreed
with my teacher in condemning the powerful and greedy people who used the law
of kamma as a tool to find wealth. However, such unorthodox teaching became
very controversial and caused a great deal of uproar among the Buddhist
scholars some of whom strongly opposed my teacher’s view. The controversy resulted in making him
even more popular among the intellectuals.
I
stayed with this belief for a good many years. Every time this issue was
brought up, I as well as other Suan Mokkh followers would have a formula of
answer in hand. That was “As long as you can practice meditation until you have
no doubts, you will have no doubts about heaven and hell either. The question
will disappear from your head. If you don’t ask questions, you don’t have a
problem and you don’t have to have an answer.” I don’t know whether that answer
sounds logical to you or not but it certainly made me feel good at that time.
There
was in fact a time after my student years, when I spent a lot of time reading
Buddhist texts, that this question came up in my mind. I could clearly see that
I had doubts about such a view because in denying the existence of heaven and
hell, I had to deny so many incidents and teachings existing all over the pali
canon. How could I deal with the fact that the Buddha went to heaven to teach
his mother, or about the heavenly beings who came to listen to the Buddha’s
teaching at dawn, or about the Buddha’s previous lives when he had to
accumulate all his parami before he could become a Buddha in his final life? I
could see that something did not add up. That was another confusing time for
me.
However,
I wasn’t strong enough to question the wisdom of one of the greatest teachers
of my generation. As far as Buddhist practice is concerned, before I can
question and judge my teacher, I must have the wisdom and insight at least
equal to him and preferably above him. I had neither of those requirements at
the time. I was still struggling in trying to get my practice right. If I
wanted to claim for myself that I belonged to Suan Mokkh, I had to follow that
path of thinking.
If
I remember correctly, this belief was still with me when I was writing my first
book 'Dear Colin, what is the meaning of life?' in the early nineties and that
formula of answer might be in that book too. It wasn’t that long ago, 4 years
at the most, while I was visiting Thailand and my nephew asked me a blunt
question: “Aunty, do you believe
in heaven and hell? Do you think they really exist?”
My
answer to him was still based on the ready-made one in my head. Compared to the way I felt in the past,
I did not feel as good and confident as before. I could see that such answers
didn’t help to get rid of my nephew’s doubt at all. He did not pester me into a
heated debate which he could have done because he had too much respect for me.
I began to take notice of such reactions but I did not have any better answer
than that at the time.
It
is obvious that there was something gradually happening in me during this past
four years which has caused me to reach the stage where I am now. Of course,
the unique experience which happened in my Tai Chi class in 1997 had a lot to
do with it, but it was still a very gradual process. My doubts about the cycle
of rebirth, heaven and hell were gradually disappearing from my head. But the
strange thing was that it did not leave me not believing like my second stage,
which I can see now was more of a deliberate intention to suppress that doubt.
Quite the contrary, the disappearance of my doubt at this later stage allowed me
to see the law of kamma in such a natural way, in the same way that I
experienced the innocent world. For some reason, I looked at people, animals
mainly in my garden, incidents and looked at my life in retrospect, then I just
knew from the bottom of my heart that all these things were brought together by
the law of kamma. I knew it without having to be confirmed by anyone or reading
any books. There was one day when
I was in my garden, I told myself off quite loudly and asked myself how on
earth I could not see this fact of life before because it was as obvious as
black and white. This gigantic mountain has always been right here in front of
me and yet I couldn’t see it, I shouted at myself. I can remember rather
vividly because I was absolutely overjoyed and felt such a great sense of
relief that at last I could claim that I had reached this realisation for
myself. Such elated experience gives me enough strength and insight to stand
forward and talk about it now.
Whenever
the law of kamma and the cycle of rebirth are brought up, most western
intellectuals prefer to dismiss this issue as a total nonsense because it
cannot be proven. Although I myself thought so at one stage in the past, I can
see from where I am now that such an argument implies a great deal of ignorance
and stupidity in the person who says it. Let alone knowing something as
significant as the law of kamma and the cycle of rebirth, we cannot even see
our own face even though it is there. If there were no form of reflections such
as water or mirrors in the world, we would still not know what our own faces
looked like, would we? What chance do we have to know and understand the cycle
of rebirth?
If
I ask you how many pieces of bone make up your spine, unless you are in the
medical profession or an expert, you could simultaneously give me an answer
from the top of your head, or if not, you would say something like “I must look
it up first.”
Indeed,
you must look it up to find out the fact even for such a tangible thing as your
own bones. You would not know the answer if you didn’t find out. Then again,
you still have to rely on someone who has cut the body up and counted the
number of the bones and told you about it either in words or writing. Then, you
believe in what that person has told you. How many people will actually go to
count the number of bones to answer my question? None, because somehow we tend
to believe what experts tell us.
What
chance do we have to find the answer to the law of kamma and the cycle of rebirth?
You might think that the question is totally irrelevant but in fact it still
stands on the same ground. If you want to find out the answer, you must at
least look it up. In the same way that you take the doctor's words for it, you
have to take the Buddha’s words for it too. However, if you really want to look
it up yourself, you can. But how?
The right tool for the right job
Let’s look at another analogy. No matter what we do, we need to have the right tool for the right job. If you are short sighted, you cannot see the words in front of you, therefore, you need a pair of glasses to aid you to see those words clearly. We all know that our kitchen tops have germs. Someone who might be very stubborn says it isn’t true because he cannot see any germs. The kitchen tops look clean enough. To prove the point, you must get a microscope to show the stubborn person that there are indeed germs on kitchen tops. To be able to see planets and stars clearly, you need to have a telescope to see them. Without the appropriate tool, you cannot carry out the job and therefore you cannot see the thing you want to see although it is there. Likewise, the law of kamma and the cycle of rebirth might be there but without the right tool, you cannot see them. Through my experience I told you about above, I am quite certain in the words I use. I used the term to see instead of to believe.
Indeed,
the law of kamma and the cycle of rebirth can be proven as long as you have the
right tool for the right job. What tool do you need to understand or to see the
law of kamma and the cycle of rebirth?
The answer is the four foundations of awareness. This tool can lead you
to see the law of kamma which causes the cycle of rebirth.
It
is only fair that before you make any judgement at all, you must at least prove
it yourself by using the right tool as I have advised. Once the tool is being
used correctly (practicing the four foundations of awareness), you will see the
art work of the law of kamma in the same way that you can see germs when you
use a microscope. To believe and to see the law of kamma are not the same. The
way that the Buddha goes on about the law of kamma and the cycle of rebirth, he
talks from the point of seeing as actual fact just like we see a red rose in
front of us. If anyone still talks in terms of believing in the law of kamma,
it means that person has not yet seen it despite having the belief.
Telling
you the right tool to tackle the law of kamma is another connection that I can
offer you from my own experience which I could not offer you before in the
past.
This mysterious universe
Before
I talk about the cycle of rebirth in detail, we must admit first of all that
mystery is the most significant characteristic of nature and of this whole
universe. We indeed know very little about ourselves and the universe we live
in. I watched a programme called ‘The Universe’ not too long ago. Some of the
facts and figures that they produced in the programme were most amazing and
fascinating. It was said that the number of the stars and planets in the
universe is equivalent to every single grain of sand on earth. Earth is merely
one little tiny teeny grain among this incalculable pile of stars and planets.
To me, this significant finding is most fascinating and such a revelation
because it should make us feel very humble about what we can and cannot know.
It also should make us see how minute and insignificant we are in this gigantic
cosmos. It is a shame that if not our own problems, then it is our own ego
which blinds us so as not to see this obvious fact. Our existing knowledge
hardly scratches the mystery hidden in nature. Every time we think that we have
opened a gateway to something, that door is merely opened for us to find yet
another bigger and stronger door. Intellectuals must not be too arrogant to
dismiss the rebirth concept too easily and should listen carefully to what I
have said.
Having
known the state of the absolute or the ultimate, it means that the Buddha’s
knowledge penetrates the universe. It also means that he knows a lot of things
that we don’t know which includes the law of kamma and the cycle of rebirth. As
the Buddha told Pra Ananda, his knowledge was equivalent to the leaves in the
whole of the forest, but he chose to teach just a handful of it. But even so,
to us the Buddha’s handful of leaves is still very much a big jungle where we
can easily get lost. That’s why we still have doubts about the law of kamma and
the cycle of rebirth. And that’s why I try to narrow the content of the handful
of leaves down to just knowing the four foundations of awareness. Without
engaging in this core practice, there is no way that we can understand anything
about Buddhism, about life, let alone the cycle of rebirth which is beyond our
reach.
Not
only can the four foundations of awareness lead us to see the ultimate state of
nature, they can also make us see the law of kamma and the cycle of rebirth
too. If there is any scientist who wants to prove the law of kamma and the
cycle of rebirth, he or she must at least use the right tool for the right job.
Without using the right tool by practising the four foundations of awareness,
no one has any right to judge or dismiss this concept as nonsense. That is not
the way any scientist would behave.
I
have told you all these things in strong words just to get rid of your
arrogance and to prepare your mind to be humble and soft so that you can open
your mind to all kinds of possibilities as far as the law of kamma and the
cycle of rebirth are concerned.