The Reality and Unreality of Rebirth | Prof. Jeffery Long

So I'm speaking today on the reality and unreality of rebirth.

This topic of rebirth is something that's fascinated me for most of my life and something I've given a good deal of thought to.

And when I was asked to speak here again, and I'm always grateful to be asked, I thought I'd like to revisit this topic.

And so it's a great joy for me to share my thoughts with you today.

And, you know, when we're here on a kind of very wintry morning, you know, to talk about death seems a bit on the nose.

But we're also talking about rebirth.

We're talking about life.

And, you know, it's interesting in the Confucian tradition.

there's a belief, and this is connected with the concepts of yin and yang, that at the height of summer and when you have everything, all the trees are green, everything is blooming, that it's appropriate then actually to remember that all this will pass away and to think of death.

That it's also appropriate in the in the middle of winter when everything is cold and and you know the plants They're not dead, but they're asleep It's appropriate then to encourage ourselves and be thinking of life and because these two go together life and death Rebirth renewal and then the passing away these go together and But death is a very hard experience for us to cope with and for us to have to go through.

But we all have to go through it at some point.

Swami Dayananda Saraswati, the founder of the Arya Samaj, once said the following about loss.

He said, in life, loss is inevitable.

Everyone knows this yet in the core of most people it remains deeply denied.

This should not happen to me It is for this reason that loss is the most difficult challenge one has to face as a human being Loss, especially the loss of our loved ones to the death of the physical body, as well as our own inevitable departure from this life, is indeed one of the definitive features of our existence on the material plane, and it's certainly the most difficult to accept and to process psychologically and emotionally.

Indeed, I suspect that death is the single most important factor that first prompted human beings to develop religious beliefs and practices.

Our views about death help us understand and cope with this universal phenomenon.

As the wise hero Yudhishthira observes in the Mahabharata, Precisely because death is so hard to face, we human beings typically prefer to pretend it will never occur.

When asked by the Yaksha, what is the greatest wonder in the world, Yudhishthira replies, day after day, countless beings go to the abode of death.

Yet those who remain believe themselves to be immortal.

What could be a greater wonder than this? Rare indeed is the person who can face death with the good humor of the famously argumentative founder of the Brahmo Samaj, Ramohan Roy, who once wrote, just consider how terrible the day of your death will be.

Others will go on speaking and you will not be able to argue back.

This is a very apt observation in our era of social media.

The Buddha says in the first chapter of the Dhammapada, the verses on Dharma, for one who is mindful of death, there is no enmity.

These are wise words indeed, but what is the connection between death and enmity? Why should remaining mindful of death keep us from feeling emotions like hatred and animosity? When reflecting on these words, I cannot help but recall my last interaction with my father during his all too brief lifetime.