News About the Dalai Lama’s Reincarnation
At the beginning of the broadcast, we discussed reports that the Dalai Lama had changed his previous position on his own reincarnation. He said, in effect, that only his foundation would identify his successor so that the Chinese government could not appoint the next Dalai Lama at will. This issue clearly involves a real power struggle between Tibet and the Chinese state. It is absurd for a government that calls itself communist to exploit a reincarnation system in order to install a Dalai Lama favorable to its interests. I can also understand the political circumstances behind the Dalai Lama’s response.
Yet political circumstances do not erase the fundamental question. Saying “I will stop reincarnating” or “I will reincarnate again” does not belong in the twenty-first century. If reincarnation can be switched on and off according to an individual’s decision, that itself is strange. Moreover, when one of the world’s best-known representatives of Buddhism presents such a claim as fact, it implants the illusion of reincarnation in millions of people as though it were truth. I do not want to soften my language here. This is speech that ignores the foundations of Buddhism in the twenty-first century, and it turns a global audience into fools.
Is Buddhism an Object of Faith?
A viewer suggested that even Buddhist broadcasters and famous professors treat Buddhism as an object of faith, which may explain the problem. That is true in part. But Buddhism was not meant to set up an object of worship. After Siddhartha became the Buddha, the goal of Buddhism was not to worship someone else but to become a buddha oneself. If practice can lead to buddhahood, becoming a buddha cannot be a supernatural event reserved for a god.
Rebirth, supernatural powers, heavenly beings, and hell have poured into the place where Buddhism became faith. Falsehood swallowed truth, and the shell took possession of the name Buddhism. I know that people accustomed to such beliefs may find my words extremely unpleasant. But discomfort cannot justify avoiding Buddhism’s central question. We need to ask not what we believe but whether it is actually so, and examine how the self and the world arise.
How Can We Examine Past Wrongdoing and Memory?
One viewer asked whether there is an effective way to recover memories while searching for one’s past mistakes. I have never scientifically studied a method that works for everyone, so I cannot present a definitive answer. In my experience, the starting point was to notice an emotional change in the present and keep asking, “Why did this emotion arise?” Following that question gradually reveals the standards that conditioned me, why I judged as I did, and where those standards came from.
Strong emotions leave deep memories. Major changes such as entering the military, leaving it, or enduring hardship during service can return in dreams decades later. For years I dreamed that I was being dragged back into the military even though I had already completed my service. Moments of intense happiness or grief behave similarly. Rather than forcing myself to scan the past like an inventory, I used present emotion as a clue and persistently followed it back to where it first arose and became repetitive. Even when a memory did not come easily, I held on to the question, “Why did I do that?” I cannot claim that this is the most efficient method for everyone, but it is what I actually did.
If We Understand Dependent Arising and Not-Self, Where Is the Soul?
Another viewer asked about people who claim to understand impermanence, not-self, and dependent arising while insisting that rebirth, karma, and souls must exist. I believe such people have never deeply examined either the three teachings or rebirth. The more closely one observes oneself, one’s surroundings, and the world, the more clearly one sees that the “self” cannot exist independently, detached from body and world.
Some scriptural biographies say that before his birth the Buddha dwelled in the Tusita heaven, surveyed the world, and entered Queen Maya’s womb. This is a profoundly human imagination based on a nonbodily “I,” a soul that does not disappear at death. Then let us ask: Can a bodiless soul think? Can it remember? Can it see, hear, smell, taste, and feel touch?
Eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body—the sensory bases—operate through relations between bodily organs and objects. Without a nose and odor-bearing matter, the event of smelling does not arise. Without eyes, light, and a brain, seeing does not arise. Without a brain, what supports thought and memory? How can a soul without body, senses, memory, or judgment locate someone’s womb and decide where to enter?
The same question applies to reports of seeing something during an out-of-body experience. When one sees a scene in a dream, did one perceive an external world, or did the brain construct a scene that felt seen? Humans can easily mistake an internally produced image for something observed. Examining the self and the senses and extending that structure to the world is what dependent arising, impermanence, and not-self mean. If there is no independently existing “I,” what changes bodies and goes on being reborn?
If the world is impermanent because it arises dependently, and if there is no fixed entity that can be called “I,” the story of an identical self continuing after bodily death directly contradicts dependent arising and not-self.
The Two Contradictions of Rebirth With and Without a Self
Most scriptural past-life stories presuppose rebirth with a self: the same “I” continues after death. The person who performed good deeds receives happiness in the next life, while the person who committed wrongs receives punishment. The subject who goes to heaven or hell must remain the same person for reward and punishment to make sense. Such stories therefore presuppose a soul.
When this collided with not-self, a later explanation arose: not the self but karma is reborn. Yet if only karma continues and the new person is not me, why should that person be punished for what I did? If the trace of my action enters an entirely different person and causes that person to suffer, this is not justice through cause and effect; it is someone else paying for my wrongdoing. If, on the other hand, the same I continues to receive reward and punishment, we have returned to rebirth with a self. Neither route can be reconciled with dependent arising and not-self.
I did not soften my words here. Claims that shift back and forth between a transmigrating soul and transmigrating karma in order to conceal the contradiction are non-Buddhist, unscientific, and philosophically incoherent. Speaking of rebirth and supernatural powers immediately after saying “I understand dependent arising” shows that one has memorized a sentence without understanding it. Anyone can make a factual mistake, but when the foundation of one’s reasoning is contradictory, the absence of wisdom appears in a single sentence or action.
How Belief in Rebirth Hides the Present Life
As long as a practitioner believes in rebirth, it is difficult to escape the thought that “I continue.” Belief in another life after death prevents one from meeting this life directly. There is no guarantee that we will meet again tomorrow. We make appointments, but those appointments may never be fulfilled. Today’s meeting is an unrepeatable, once-in-a-lifetime moment.
Seeing this deeply reveals how wasteful it is to spend the present fighting, raging, or tormenting oneself. The rigid thought that things “must be this way” also begins to dissolve with insight into impermanence. Valuing the present does not mean clinging to the fantasy that another opportunity awaits after death. It means facing the now that will never return.
Knowing and Awakening Are Different
Ask about dependent arising and nearly anyone can say that things arise through conditions. Whether that sentence actually operates in one’s life and thought is another matter. If one recites the sensory bases without asking how sensation arises, speaks of observation without knowing what to observe, and accepts rebirth, past lives, and supernatural powers without questioning them, one does not understand dependent arising.
A person can pretend to be awakened, write books, and give lectures. Others may revere that person. But depth appears in how one’s thoughts are constructed and what one does when faced with contradiction. If someone explains dependent arising and then casually says that rebirth exists, the great distance between verbal knowledge and clear awakening becomes visible.
Does Disbelief in Superstition Automatically Make One Wise?
Humanity lived for a very long time under religion and superstition. Skepticism, materialism, and Buddhism twenty-five centuries ago formed part of a movement that broke such beliefs and turned attention toward human beings and observation. Modern science greatly expanded that movement. Yet many people today still live in an age of superstition rather than an age of science. More tragic still, Buddhism—which should break superstition—often spreads fortune-telling, predictions, supernatural powers, miraculous relics, and rebirth.
Does having no religion automatically make a person wise? No. Someone who does not believe simply because their parents and community were nonreligious may not have questioned and liberated themselves; they may merely be conditioned by a different environment. A person who normally rejects gods and souls may seek prayer and mysterious powers when facing grave illness or business failure. Having never escaped through one’s own reasoning, one returns under pressure to the superstitions heard throughout life.
The important distinction is not religious versus nonreligious. It is whether one can refuse to make any idea sacred, apply the blades of questioning and criticism, and have the courage to cut open one’s own thought and examine where it came from. We must be able to make belief a subject of dialogue and face the possibility that it is superstition. Liberating oneself is not merely sharing society’s lack of belief. It is understanding, through observation and critical thought, why a claim cannot be believed.
Looking Back at Buddhism From Outside It
At the end of the broadcast, we chose the subject of the next lecture together. The candidates included the Sermon on the Mount, Laozi’s Tao Te Ching, the “Discussion on Making All Things Equal” in the Zhuangzi, and The Little Prince. I see deeply Buddhist elements in all of them. Searching for the jewel of Buddhism only within institutional Buddhism takes enormous time because one must repeatedly criticize rebirth, supernatural powers, and superstition. Literature and philosophy outside Buddhism can sometimes make Buddhism’s center more visible.
Rather than clinging only to whether Jesus or the Buddha existed exactly as later stories claim, it is more important to read the philosophical meaning transmitted under their names. Greek, Indian, and other traditions influenced one another. By reading the Sermon on the Mount, Daoist texts, and The Little Prince, we can examine which insights directly help our lives. After hearing the viewers’ preferences, we decided to begin the next series with The Little Prince. It was a choice to step outside the label of Buddhism and test whether we could still see dependent arising, impermanence, and human illusion.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.