Saturday, April 4, 2015

Getting A Second Shot


So, after writing about the Dalai Lama, and his seven centuries of intimate ancestry (it's very intimate when you are your own ancestors), I got to thinking about reincarnation. The notion has a lot of fans. It's an attractive scenario for those who really chafe at dying. And that's most of us. Most of us are not at all happy about being extinguished utterly. There's something embedded in our own consciousness that rebels against being snuffed out. It's probably built right into the motherboard.

If it's just your conscious mind trying to grab eternity by the tail, though, I think reincarnation is an unlikely bet. You're assuming your spirit, or soul, is timeless, and just periodically needs a new ride. And presumably this is true for everyone. But we have something like seven billion people now, and we can't all have been serially reincarnated, unless a lot of us are carpooling.

Some people claim to have found out who they were in a past life. I've never understood why they aren't looking into their future incarnations as well. We all seem to have some idea that time progresses linearly, so that our future selves haven't happened yet, but somehow I doubt it. I don't think we're traveling along a rail of time like a bowling ball on the return chute. Maybe we're more like a marble rolling around a rumply Möbius blanket. All the time is happening all the time, but we only perceive that little point where our marble is intersecting the blanket. It seems like a straight line to us as it rolls, but maybe we're going over, under, behind, and ahead of ourselves constantly. Of course this possibility makes our heads blow up. We are wired to have a lack of imagination about time.

Some of the traditions have more interesting reincarnation prospects. Some Buddhists hold that there are a number of realms into which you can be reincarnated, with the ultimate goal of having things figured out so that you can eventually step out of time altogether. You could be a human. Or an animal. You could be a supernatural being, and if you land in the top tier, where it's lilacs and lollipops all the time, you run the risk of being so happy you quit working on yourself, and then you backslide into a lesser realm. I think that's a neat option. It's realistic. Get me into a recliner and I can't even always summon the gumption to change the TV channel. Modern Family episode I've seen ten times already? Good enough, I say.

Or, if you're a certain kind of soul that is unlikely to be Buddhist, you can just freeze your own ass and hope someone comes up with a cure for what felled you. Cryogenics is the sort of technical whizbangery whose proponents think of themselves as forward-looking, but it could equally well be a very short-sighted move. If you choose this path, apparently it has never occurred to you that if you are in some kind of suspended state beyond death, you might discover it's okay after all, just the way it is. And you're nevertheless planning to have yourself yanked right back into a much less satisfactory existence just because of your own lack of imagination. If you come back you're probably going to start out old, for one thing. And if it's just your head that's being frozen for future redeployment, you're going to come back old and really, really short.

We all just want to remain alive. But it's really our consciousness that wants to keep itself going, against all odds. And if we're not consciously aware of the coherence of our serial lives, I can't see how reassuring that is. If, right now, I am the continued soul of a stout-hearted woman who perished in a terrible riveting accident during World War II, but I don't know it, and neither did she, how is that reassuring?

Maybe I do have a spirit that will outlive my earthly ride, but I'm okay if I don't. For now I'll just stick my head out the window and feel the breeze on my muzzle and call it good enough.

35 comments:

  1. I have enough trouble figuring out who I am and where I want to be in this life...being reincarnated is just a little depressing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh dear--do we have to figure out who we are, too? This is too hard.

      Delete
  2. I saw this interview on NBC news:http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/boy-says-he-remembers-past-life-hollywood-agent-n327506

    and I am perplexed. It's the second one I've seen with a child with detailed memories of a past life that turns out to be someone's actual life. I DON'T BELIEVE IN THIS STUFF, but when it's a child's memory, how do we explain it? I have no idea. And I don't want to come back---I think I'd end up as a slave in Mali or something equally horrible.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I can't explain it either, except that I suspect Shenanigans. And I think you should come back as a Princess.

      Delete
    2. I think that comes with the Princess package.

      Delete
  3. I've always thought being easily pleased is a heavenly attribute. Recently, I watched the new Cinderella movie, with Lily James, at one of those SoCal cinemas with leather recliners. A waiter brought a cheese plate with figs, candied walnuts, and fresh fruit. AND popcorn. Heavenly. The movie ended well, too.

    I'm probably glomming onto the recliner part of this story, because reincarnation has always struck me as too much of a stretch, altogether.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I enjoy the things I enjoy so strongly that I don't even apologize for it anymore. I know we're supposed to suffer in order to grow, but a nice sausage and a great beer and a stream going by and a little weird bug just do it for me. They do. I can be pleased with a lot less, too.

      Delete
  4. I have met, in my limited life, four different women who are reincarnations of Queen Elizabeth the first. So, clearly, the intelligent, powerful souls are multiplying and that's why there are so many more of us now. Wonder how many people I will be in the future? And I wonder why downtrodden serfs don't get re-incarnated? No one remembers their life as a starving peasant.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My experience has been that most people can trace their lineage, at least, if not their actual personage, to Charlemagne. I'm not even clear who Charlemagne was, and I don't think they are either.

      Delete
    2. Charlemagne (c.742-814), also known as Karl and Charles the Great, was a medieval emperor who ruled much of Western Europe from 768 to 814. In 771, Charlemagne became king of the Franks, a Germanic tribe in present-day Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and western Germany. He embarked on a mission to unite all Germanic peoples into one kingdom, and convert his subjects to Christianity. A skilled military strategist, he spent much of his reign engaged in warfare in order to accomplish his goals. In 800, Pope Leo III (750-816) crowned Charlemagne emperor of the Romans. In this role, he encouraged the Carolingian Renaissance, a cultural and intellectual revival in Europe. When he died in 814, Charlemagne’s empire encompassed much of Western Europe, and he had also ensured the survival of Christianity in the West. Today, Charlemagne is referred to by some as the father of Europe.

      Delete
    3. " ... he spent much of his reign engaged in warfare in order to accomplish his goals" ... Karl clearly had the concepts of Christian love, tolerance and kindness down pat ...

      Delete
    4. I would like to state at this time that I am not, and never have been, Charlemagne.

      Delete
  5. I sorta kinda likea believe in cellular memory, the stuff passed along in our very genes themselves. Then again, imagination is so very powerful, at least for me. So a stiff does of cynica is always called for.
    XO
    WWW

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I love my imagination but I don't believe it. In fact I make it a point to not believe everything I think. There might be some kind of genetic memory passed down through people. The kind of stuff that makes most people recoil at snakes and hold on tight to their parents when they're infants.

      Delete
  6. I was raised thinking my grandmother was my mother, my mother and aunts were my sisters and my grandfather was my father which makes me in another life my own uncle.
    (Not so unusual in the hills and the south.)
    the Ol'Buzzard

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm getting out of this that your mama was naughty in some very specific way, and that everyone handled it just fine.

      Delete
  7. Have you noticed that the people who have identified who they were in past lives were always princesses at least? No cleaning or wait staff have memories it seems. Too busy perhaps.
    I am fine with the concept of being snuffed out. With luck I will be planted under a tree to feed it, and I don't need or want any more immortality than that.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I'm just fine with my mortal remains (hold the formaldehyde,pleas!) becoming compost.
    As for returning.Hell! no! I most certainly don't want to come back to a repeat of this life, either as myself or someone else.Enjoy what you have while you have it, i say.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think I'm getting a pretty great shot right here and now, and it would be grabby to want for more.

      Delete
  9. I'm expecting the other side of death to be a surprise party -- with cake. :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. If I were reincarnated I would like to either (A) be able to chose my own body and life (but told it doesn't work that way) or (B) a very spoiled cat owned by a very rich, cat lovin' lady!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. my cat prefers chest rubs, a belly rub will get my arm ripped open.

      Delete
  11. I believe that reincarnation is just another of those ways that mankind tries to deal with stuff that is uncomfortable: death, the fragility and transience of life, earthly burdens like poverty/illness/persecution/etc. People don't like to think that this life is all there is, even people with very good lives, strangely enough.

    I'm okay with being here, and I'm okay with not being here after that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Me too. Not in any hurry to check out, though.

      Delete
  12. I believe in reincarnation but not transmigration of souls( that's where animals come in). And I have a lot of company. I have no religion. The thought of serial learning and unending chances appeals to me. I find it explains a lot. Like why sometimes you are the bug and sometimes you are the windshield.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Good for you, you made me look it up. So transmigration of souls could be a reincarnation as another human OR an animal, and you don't believe in that? EVEN IF YOU COULD BE A SALAMANDER? Sorry, didn't mean to shout.

      My sister Margaret did not go so far as to say she believed in reincarnation, but she surely hoped for it. Her life presented so many challenges that she couldn't bear to think that there was no point in it. She hoped to be able to continue a learning quest. (I'm hoping to skip out on the final exam and get a decent job in the trades.)

      Delete
  13. I'm pretty sure I haven't lived before this lifetime. too much of this world and its people confuses me. If I'd lived a couple of lives already I'd have some of that confusion sorted already I reckon. Unless I was a slug or a rock the first few times. Maybe a river, drifting along (*~*)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No fair. You don't get to be a river if I don't. Although, I did have a little crick in my neck once.

      Delete
    2. No. You didn't just say that. How long have you been waiting for an opportunity to use that one???

      Delete
    3. I've got a little spring in my step.

      Delete
    4. I thought I heard something creaking.

      Delete