Hindu Belief in Reincarnation One

Hindu Belief in Reincarnation

One of the most interesting aspects of the emerging world community is that people from different cultures and traditions will be coming together in cultural and traditional exchanges. These exchanges should be exciting, because we will be able to experience that force which has driven ancient civilizations to modernity. An interest in understanding one another's cultural traditions will be a first step in binding people not as defined by those beliefs, but by our humanity. We will find that while we are different in many ways, and those ways in which we are different should be celebrated, but also we will find the many ways in which we are alike as members of humanity. As we get to know one another better, we will find that we have a lot in common that inspection of our histories will about us.

It will perhaps surprise some to find that religion will actually be a place where we will find commonalities between us. One has only to choose the religion, and look to that for something that at first might seem strange, but the more in depth research that is conducted, the less strange it begins to be, and, in many cases, even familiar. Take, for instance, the Hindu belief in reincarnation. Hindu traditional beliefs in reincarnation will take the researcher back in time, beyond time even, and into the stories originating in a past that is kept present by the swamiji religious leaders and the Hindu Indians their selves in their dedication and loyalty to their tradition. All of the Hindu beliefs are supported by stories of their traditions, of their people that have been handed down since the ancient times. The stories of the Hindu God Vishnu and others, and of reincarnation, as well as the rituals of Brahmin, arise from a past so distant in time as to remain obscure as to their origins. Hindu religion is believed to have originated before time, before the earth itself. If you look to find the origins of these concepts, research will take you only to the point in time and history where people outside of Hindu society actually began investigating Hindu religion, and reincarnation. There are five pillars of Hinduism, and of these five pillars, reincarnation is the fourth pillar, or Punarabhawa.

In Hindu tradition, reincarnation is often told in connection with morals of the story. For instance, even the Oedipus complex is addressed by reincarnation.

All three versions of "The Seth and the Sadhu" dwell upon the relationships between children and parents. In the version featuring Narada, hostility between a parent and child of the same sex is not commented on (unless one argues that the son's hearing of the father's death represents a wish fulfillment). In the versions of both Stokes and Swamiji, though, the Oedipus complex is clearly an issue. It is considered from the parent's rather than the child's point-of-view, and is phrased in the idiom of reincarnation."

It is through reincarnation that the individual who was perhaps wronged, or at fault for causing a division in the family is reinserted into the family through reincarnation in order to have the opportunity to turn that situation around. These kinds of beliefs helped ancient Hindus to explain things that they had trouble understanding, and, because the beliefs are rooted in traditions that even today serve the population in positive ways.

The highest level of happiness that a Hindu can achieve is to reincarnate as a Brahmin, which is achieved only after many successive lives. This level of reincarnation is considered a reward. However the fact that the person was reincarnated means that there is some work left to be done as residual lessons of past life experiences.

Perfection of the purification of the soul is the ultimate goal, and this would suggest that it is, first, not easily achieved, and, second, that achieving that perfection would mean that the individual had his or her life in such order that they would not have to repeat life, but would have achieved that ultimate level of existence in perfection, Swarga.

There are certain ways to achieve the level of awareness at the human level to pass from Brahmin, which must be achieved first, to that level of highest meditative awareness on a spiritual plane. First, one must dedicate their life in Brahmin to doing good deeds, living a way of life that reflects the respect for other life, human and animal, and living in such a way as to demonstrate as to prove that a love and appreciation of all life is within the Brahmin's heart. Second, there are rituals for eating and staying clean internally and externally that must be adhered to. To reincarnate as a Brahmin is the highest happiness, but it is a lot of work too. Reading and meditation, and sharing the wisdoms of the many Brahmin who came before him without judgment or prejudice are a part of the good deeds that the Brahmin does in his life. The Brahmin must not covet those worldly things around him, materialistic or human, like a friend's wife. He must perform the human, and recite the thousand names of Vishnu.

Still, many people do not achieve the Brahmin level of earthly opportunity for thousands of lifetimes. The reincarnation is directly associated with how the person lived his life previously, what sort of amends remain to be made by the individual, and the level of spiritual awareness that has been achieved during existence in the flesh.

All of these stories about reincarnation are consistent throughout the Hindu tradition, but there is also what might be considered proofs of reincarnation in Hindu society. Dr. Ian Stevenson, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, believes that he has revealed evidence in his evidence to support that there are physical signs of past lives, like birthmarks on a person's body. In a book review of Stevenson's book, David Pratt says that birth marks on the human body are often indicative of where that individual has suffered a physical trauma in a past life, often leading to death. For more than thirty years, Pratt says, Stevenson and his colleagues collected research, mostly from Hindus and Buddhists, that supported his findings about birth marks and the significance of those marks to past life experiences. Stevenson also said that if people paid closer attention to the things that children say, they would be able to perhaps begin to see that young children sometimes retain memories of past lives, and that what many adults simply cast aside as childish jibber-jabber, is actually the child's recollections of a past life.

Children sometimes display behaviour that is unusual for the child's family but fits in with what is known about the person whose life the child remembers. For example, there are cases where children of lower caste Indian families who believe they had been Brahmins -- and in their view still were -- would refuse to eat their family's food, which they considered polluted. Conversely, a child remembering the life of a street-sweeper may show an alarming lack of concern about cleanliness. Some children show skills that they have not learned in their present life, but which the previous personality was known to have had."

That Stevenson was able to find many examples of reincarnation to support his research is not really surprising, since reincarnation is a part of the everyday Hindu life. Often children born with multiple limbs or other birth defects, such as conjoined twins, will be perceived by the Hindu as the reincarnation of certain Gods from their mythology. This will lead to building of shrines around the deformed children, and leave offerings to them. This really takes away the stigma of the birth defect, and in some cases could serve to make it difficult for modern medicine to intervene, because the child experiences such love and is celebrated within their own community.

Over the ages, many people from different religious backgrounds have made studies of the Hindu belief system, and it would probably not be of a surprise to find that the majority of them did so because of an interest in reincarnation. This is not surprising given that most other religions of the world have some sort of concept concerning reincarnation, even Islam.

A belief in reincarnation is atypical for Islam. There are, however, some Islamic sects that believe in reincarnation, including the Druze and Alawi who are most numerous in Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey. These minority groups hold a tenuous position among Muslims, in some measure due to their belief in reincarnation, and are often considered by their mainstream Sunni or Shi'a co-religionists as heterodox or even heretical. Druze and Alawi differ in several particulars regarding how they describe the workings of reincarnation, but this essay focuses only on the Druze."

For the Druze, the belief in reincarnation is intertwined in their historic storytelling, and has beautiful Hindu-like themes of achieving a higher awareness, and in so doing, a higher existence that is consistent with the Hindu belief that eventually the ultimate existence is achieved when a person becomes one with God, a part of God. We can easily see how this belief would not just set the Druze apart from fundamentalist Muslims, but could possibly be interpreted as a heresy by the more strict fundamentalists.