A Buddhist View of the World

There are two main differences between the way Buddhism sees the world and how we in the West view it. These two differences are karma and rebirth.

Karma

‘Karma’ is a word from Sanskrit meaning all actions have effects. It’s not fate or destiny, it’s more like ‘you reap what you sow’. If you drop a cup, it breaks. It’s not fate or destiny, it’s simply a consequence of dropping it, caused by gravity. If you walk out in front of a bus you’ll get hit by it. Again, it’s no mysterious, external force, it’s simply a consequence of actions.

Buddhists believe that everything is due to karma, i.e. it happens as a consequence of actions. If you do something, it will have a consequence. Good things (virtuous acts) have good consequences, bad things (delusions) have negative impacts. Simple and irrefutable – everything has a consequence.

But it doesn’t just apply to actions, it also applies to speech and thoughts. If you say something, it will have a consequence. Loving, caring speech has a positive effect, whereas negative, divisive gossip creates an unpleasant atmosphere. If your mind is downhearted and full of negativity, then everything you see around you will appear to back up this view. On the other hand, if your thoughts are joyful and peaceful, that’s how you will see and experience life.

Rebirth

Rebirth is only a complicated, difficult subject for us in the West. People from the East wonder why we don’t get it.

In the Western world, we believe that we live then die, so a clear start and end point. The symbol for zero – 0 – means ‘nothing’, like a hole or an absence, so indicates a starting point. But in Eastern traditions everything is viewed as being continuous so the same symbol actually means ‘totality’, or everything in a cycle with no start or end.

In the West we view birth as the start and death as the end. The Eastern view has no start and no end so the concepts of ‘birth’ and ‘death’ as we understand them are lost on them.

In this view, we simply manifest, or appear, in a different way after this life stops. So no start or end, it’s a continuous process. The nature of our next life will be a direct consequence of the karma we created in previous lives, especially what was in our mind at the moment of death.

This is quite easy to grasp when you realise that what’s in our mind at one moment is really a continuation of what was there in the previous moment. What are you thinking about right now, at this precise moment? What you’re thinking about in the next moment will probably be a direct continuation of what’s currently in your mind.

Karmic Rebirths

An understanding of karma, or the fundamental law of cause and effect, is very powerful in itself but it becomes even more profound and significant if you think about it in terms of previous and future lives. What you did in a previous life can come back as an effect in this life, and what you do in this life will set you up for the future.

Live virtuously now and in the future you’ll experience comfortable circumstances and a pleasant life. Live a life full of delusions and you’ll suffer more – both in this life and in later lives.

A helpful way to understand rebirth and karma together is to think about heaven and hell.

In traditional Western beliefs, we get a single hit at life on earth before a permanent existence in either heaven or hell. But In Eastern beliefs, we get to do it over and over again in an endless cycle called samsara. In Eastern terms, when we die, we manifest in a different form in something heavenly or hellish, depending on whether we have been good or not. So the concept of ‘re-birth’ isn’t really the right phrase to use, it’s probably more accurate to say ‘continuously manifesting’, but as that’s a bit clumsy we’ll stick with the phrase rebirth.

Remember too that the Western world doesn’t have a phrase to describe an endless cycle (whereas Buddhists have the term samsara), so we have to use what we’ve got. But, true to karma, this has a consequence, and the consequence is that we get a wrong idea about the whole thing because of the connotations of the word re–birth.

The Afterlife

Asking a Buddhist who was brought up in the Eastern part of the world if they believe in an afterlife is a bit like asking someone who was blind from birth to describe the colour orange. They can’t do it. An after-life only makes sense in terms of one life, but if you live continuously, taking different forms each time, you can’t have an after-life, because that would need life to stop at some point, so that something can come after it. If it’s continuous, there wouldn’t be anything after it, otherwise it wouldn’t be continuous.

So next time you want to squish a fly, perhaps you should think twice. It might be be Great Aunt Bessie in a different form.