Karma For Today's Traveler 13: Rebirth & Movie Tickets

Explore the Buddhist concept of cause and effect, the dazzling processor we call mind, and the fantastic creative power of human intention in this book written by Theravada Buddhist monk, Phra Bhasakorn Bhavilai and David Freyer. In part 13 explore the concept of rebirth through the metaphor of purchasing movie tickets.

Trigger Warning: This practice may include references to death, dying, and the departed.

Transcript

The Layered Mind,

Bodily Death and Rebirth.

Every time our mind perceives an object through our sense bases,

An intention arises.

This intention can be thought of as a kind of mind stuff,

A building block of the mental environment.

Each layer or intention unit covers the previous one layer by layer.

Even this very moment as you read these words,

Layers of intention are being laid down in rapid succession with the speed of mind.

At the time of bodily death,

Our internal collection of mind stuff takes on new importance because as the physical senses shut down,

Our connection with the physical world is broken and we are left with only our mental objects.

Disconnected from the stream of input from the bodily senses,

The mind becomes aware that the body is going to die.

And,

Shaken and frightened,

The mind looks for some input,

For something to grasp.

This is similar to a person who has suddenly lost a home where they have lived their entire life.

Such a person is disoriented and will quickly look for another place to stay,

Contacting friends or family or anyone who can help.

And,

As the mind is unable to find assistance through the physical senses,

It turns back to data already perceived and stored.

This is very much like one's life flashing before one's eyes.

And remember,

The mind is very fast.

The key issue is,

As the images flash by,

What past data point of consciousness does the mind grasp as it disconnects from the body?

This final moment of perception is important because the qualities and characteristics of that final unit of perception will condition the next form that the mind takes.

It will condition the next rebirth.

Yet,

For the untrained mind,

The data flashes by much too quickly for the mind to consciously choose.

It's something like musical chairs.

When the music stops,

You grab the nearest chair.

In the unfortunate case of a person who has lived a selfish,

Reckless life and committed some truly terrible act,

For example,

Matricide,

Then this powerful negative data point,

Extremely out of balance with nature,

Will rise like great flash and attract the mind.

There will be almost no way to avoid this mental data.

The mind will be inescapably drawn to it and the subsequent rebirth will be adversely conditioned.

Luckily,

Few of us have such extreme karmic acts to rebalance.

For those of us with more normal karma,

Yet still untrained in controlling our minds,

It's quite likely that we will end up with a data point from the data bank of our habitual action.

It's simply statistics.

We have more habitual data than anything else.

This habitual data could be good or bad.

For example,

If someone worked in a slaughterhouse killing animals every day,

A lot of these data points will be flashing by.

It's not unlikely that the mind will end up with one of these data points when the music stops,

Experiencing the harmful killing intention of that moment,

And possibly experience rebirth in the animal realm,

The realm of fear,

In order to re-assimilate the mental condition they have created.

On a positive side,

A nurse or teacher may have an abundance of data points related to helping another person,

Relieving suffering,

Or passing on wisdom.

With so many such data points,

It's not unlikely that they will end up with a thought of loving-kindness and compassion as their final unit of perception.

Thus,

In the next thought interval following physical death,

The mind expresses loving-kindness and compassion.

This action,

As always,

Expresses itself as a new,

Non-physical body matching those mental qualities.

This is angelic rebirth.

Rebirth into a finer,

Angelic body,

Into a heaven that has literally been built from the mind stuff of their previous good intentions and mental actions,

A personally made paradise.

While in such a heavenly state,

They are literally consuming their good karma.

Finally,

As their heavenly intention bank account decreases,

They will reach a point where they can no longer stay where they are.

The heavenly intention of their death data point has run its course and expired.

The next previous data point is then retrieved from the data stack to act as the template for the next rebirth.

And so it goes.

In Thailand,

It's normal to remind our loved ones,

As they are dying,

Of meritorious actions that they have done in the past.

Reminding a dying grandmother,

For example,

Of how she gave food to young monks at sunrise,

Morning after morning.

It is a happy memory for the grandmother.

Her mind is filled with loving-kindness,

Generosity,

And joy.

And so,

As her mind detaches from her body,

It immediately expresses itself as a new non-physical body,

Corresponding to those positive states.

Pleasant final thoughts lead to pleasant rebirths.

Rebirth and Movie Tickets.

Bodily death is a transition from one type of mental housing to another.

The last thought or intention that we have as we leave our human house will condition the next housing we acquire.

And equally important,

The next neighborhood.

I like to think of this final thought at the threshold as a ticket to our next movie.

But remember,

The speed of the mind is very fast,

So our tickets are being created very quickly.

If our thought is about goodness and joy,

Then our ticket will take us to see a movie of goodness and joy.

The duration of the movie depends on the duration and intensity of the intention behind the thought,

The number of tickets we made.

A strong,

Intense,

Sustained thought of goodwill gives us a whole series of tickets,

Allowing us to step into a long,

Good movie.

Furthermore,

Buddhist literature indicates that the time frame of angelic or hellish realms is different from ours.

A few moments here can be a long,

Long time in either heaven or hell.

Each ticket created in a flash corresponds to a much longer duration in heaven or hell.

Let's imagine a hypothetical moment of death.

Let's assume we are basically a good person,

Not locked into the five precepts,

But averaging toward the good.

We are driving our car on the highway,

Thinking nice thoughts of our family,

As usual.

Suddenly,

A careless driver cuts us off and forces us off the road.

We have a flash of animal rage at the driver's reckless incompetence,

And we try to regain control of our car as it hits off the road.

Then,

Straight ahead of us,

We see a kid on a bicycle.

With compassion,

We immediately think,

No way,

I will not hurt that kid.

We countersteer the only way that's left to us,

And we smash into a light post.

At that moment,

We die.

Ticket number one.

Because of the loving kindness and compassion that we showed for the kid on the bike during our final thought moment,

We have a bunch of heavenly tickets on our hand.

Thus,

In the next moment,

We find ourselves surrounded by goodness,

Angels,

And all the beauty of heaven.

Our last thought or intention became the scaffolding on which our next body was formed.

Our thought was filled with loving kindness and compassion for a stranger.

This gave us a heavenly body in heaven.

A body not of flesh and blood,

But a finer,

Angelic body,

Not tied so strongly to matter.

We have our mind,

And we can experience things around us which are perfectly real to us.

And because we are less attached to the physical,

We are not troubled by old age or sickness.

We are surrounded by heaven's beauty.

We are beautiful.

We feel no pain.

It seems perfect,

But for one thing,

It cannot last.

The power of our final thought slash intention brought us to heaven.

Like a series of movie tickets,

Properly paid for,

Entitle us to see the corresponding film.

Depending on the duration and intensity of our threshold intention,

The number and value of the tickets,

This pleasant movie may last a long or short time.

Either way,

Our time in heaven will be much,

Much longer than the duration of that final thought.

But the movie will end when our tickets run out.

One day,

Our heavenly friends may see us fade from view as the energy of our final thought reaches completion.

We then come to the next series of tickets,

Our second to the last human thought.

Ticket number two.

In our highway death scenario,

Our second to last thought was anger at the bad driver.

So we drop from heaven into one of the hellish realms.

Anger takes us to a land of burning and violence and pain.

Everything is real for us in our hell body and our mind suffers.

But our time in hell is not a form of punishment,

But the natural result of our destructive intention.

It is natural law in action.

Our angry intention built us a non- physical hell body corresponding to our mental state.

We sent ourselves to hell.

Thankfully though,

This series of tickets too will not last forever.

And when the intention has been rebalanced,

We will then move on to our next previous thought.

Ticket number three.

Our third to last thought was one of our habitual thoughts.

Nice thoughts of our family.

This is a thought that sends no harm to the world.

It is a thought of a moral human and it will lead us into the possibility of human rebirth.

I say possibility because unlike heaven and hell,

Humanity is connected to the physical.

So some physical requirements are necessary before rebirth is possible.

Namely the physical ability of a woman to conceive and deliver a baby.

Past karmic connections with others may lead us to be born into families with whom we have shared past lives.

Buddhism has many stories of people traveling through their lives in groups.

Sometimes we are the brother,

Sometimes the mother,

Sometimes the lover,

Sometimes the best friend.

There are also many stories of people coming into conflict again and again in a tit-for-tat intertwined chain of lives.

I killed you last life and this life you kill me and in the next lives we may do it again.

This ignorant cycle of violence need not continue.

All we need to do is to exercise our free will to upgrade our behavior.

View the world with loving kindness and compassion and take control of ourselves.

Our karma is a factor.

At times a strong and powerful factor.

But what we actually do is up to us,

Up to our free will.

Now back to our tickets.

Ticket number three took us back to humanity.

If we are fortunate enough to be reborn human,

Then the remaining tickets in our hand join the stack of accumulated knowledge that our mind carries.

And as we begin another human life,

We act from this baseline of accumulated subconscious knowledge and begin generating new tickets.

And so our chain of lives continues.

So to recap,

Our thought or intentions at the moment of death are like tickets that direct us to various rebirths.

From heaven or hell,

We don't really have the power to generate new tickets,

So we continue moving backwards through the tickets we generated as a human until we make it back to the human realm.

Once human again,

The old tickets join our massive subconscious data stack,

And with our new human intention,

We begin generating new tickets.

For those who are curious,

Buddhism says that animals have some ability to generate new tickets.

This power is much less than the human,

But it is sufficient to trap some in a long chain of animal rebirths.

We are born a dog,

For example.

People feed us,

We lay around,

Get taken on walks,

And we think with our dog brain.

Not bad,

I like it.

And so we get reborn as a dog again and again.

Eventually though,

We will grow dissatisfied with the limitations of a dog's life,

And we will move on.

But Buddhism warns of this animal trap,

Because as an animal we cannot benefit from understanding the truth of nature.

As humans though,

We can benefit from knowing the truth.

We can develop ourselves.

This is why human life is so valuable.

In a similar way,

Heaven can be considered a trap.

Buddhism regards it as a less useful and productive life than a human's life.

So,

Beautiful as long as heavenly life is,

It could be thought of as a poor use of one's time.

Furthermore,

The beauty and ease and comfort of heaven can spoil us and give us habits which can make our re-entry to humanity a painful one.

So,

For Buddhists,

Heaven is not an ultimate goal.

But for a normal untrained person,

It's a much more preferable rebirth than some of the alternatives.

And speaking of re-entry,

Imagine now a new baby.

A Buddhist would not call the baby pure and innocent and lacking experience.

Neither would they call the baby guilty.

Rather,

They would view the baby as a consciousness reborn with latent habits and predispositions and karmic connections with this world and with the father and mother.