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Creating Bridges: Spirituality & Philosophy:
Spirituality in Daily Life:
Science, Creation, and Rebirth -
Part 4 of 4
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by Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron |
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Why can't we remember our past lives?
At the moment, our minds are obscured by ignorance, making it difficult to remember the past. Also, many changes occur in our body and mind as we die and are reborn, making recollection difficult. However, the fact that we don't remember something doesn't mean that it does not exist. Sometimes we cannot even remember where we put our car keys! Nor can we remember what we ate for dinner a month ago!
Some people can remember their past lives. The Tibetans have a system of recognizing the reincarnations of highly realized masters. Quite often, as young children, these people will recognize their friends or possessions from a previous life. Some ordinary people have also had past life recall, sometimes in meditation or through hypnosis. For example, as a child, a woman in Britain remembered the village in which she lived in her previous life and would draw pictures of it. She also recalled her family there: she was the mother of eight children. When she was an adult, she went to that village and met her son from the previous life who was now in his seventies. He was able to validate many of her previous life memories because he remembered the same events from his childhood.
Is it important to know what our past lives were?
No. What's important is how we live our present life. Knowing what we were in past lives is useful only if it helps us to generate strong determination to avoid negative actions or to free ourselves from cyclic existence. To try to find out who we were in past lives only for curiosity's sake isn't useful. It could even lead us to become proud: "I was a king in my past life." "I was so famous and talented." "I was Einstein!" So what? Actually, we have all been and done everything in our infinite past lives in cyclic existence. The important thing is to purify our previous negative actions, avoid creating more, and put energy into accumulating positive potential and developing our good qualities.
There's a Tibetan saying: "If you want to know about your past life, look at your present body. If you want to know your future life, look at your present mind." We received our present rebirth as a result of our past actions. A human rebirth is a fortunate one, and we created the cause for it by living ethically in our previous lives. These good causes were probably created in a fortunate rebirth in the past, because creating such virtue is difficult in unfortunate rebirths. On the other hand, our future rebirths will be determined by what we think, say, and do now, and our mind motivates all these actions. Thus, we can get an idea of the kind of rebirths we will take by looking at our present attitudes and emotions and examining whether they are constructive or destructive. We don't need to go to a fortune-teller to ask what will become of us. We can simply consider the imprints we are leaving on our mindstream moment by moment by our thoughts, words, and deeds.
If everyone has had previous lives, how do you account for the population increase?
All the people alive now weren't necessarily human beings on planet Earth in their past lives. Their previous lives could have been as another life-form or in another universe. Earth is a tiny speck in the universe, and Buddhists believe that there is life in other places. Also, an animal, for example, could die and be reborn as a human.
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Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron,
Buddhist Nun, Teacher, Author
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Thubten Chodron (Cherry Greene) graduated with a B.A. in History from UCLA in 1971. After traveling extensively in Europe, North Africa and Asia, she taught in the Los Angeles City School District did post-graduate work in Education at USC.
In l975, she attended a meditation course given by Ven. Lama Yeshe and Ven. Zopa Rinpoche, and subsequently went to their monastery in Nepal to explore Buddhism. In l977, she was ordained as a Buddhist nun.
Chodron studied and practiced Buddhism of the Tibetan tradition under the guidance of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan masters for many years in India and Nepal.
She was the spiritual program director at Lama Tzong Khapa Institute in Italy for nearly two years and studied three years at Dorje Pamo Monastery in France. For two years she was resident teacher at Amitabha Buddhist Centre in Singapore, and for ten years she was resident teacher and spiritual advisor at Dharma Friendship Foundation in Seattle.
She currently is co-founder of Sravasti Abbey at Liberation Park in USA. Ven. Chodron has taught Buddhist philosophy, psychology and meditation worldwide.
Her books include:
Open Heart, Clear Mind; Buddhism for Beginners; Working with Anger; Taming the Monkey Mind, and Blossoms of the Dharma: Living as a Buddhist Nun.
Active in interfaith dialogue, she also does prison work. Ven. Chodron emphasizes the practical application of Buddha's teachings in daily life and is especially skilled at explaining them in ways easily understood and practiced by Westerners.
www.thubtenchodron.
org
www.sravastiabbey.
org
www.dharmafriendship.
org
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