A Dialogue on Rebirth

From Land of No Buddha (Windhorse Publications, 1998)

Lati Rinpoche, a high-ranking master within the Tibetan Gelug order, visited North America in September 1986. During his weeklong stay in Toronto he graciously made time in his very busy schedule for an interview with Spring Wind. The transcript of this interview was never published there. The following is an excerpt from that transcript.

Introduction

In Bodhisattvas in bluejeans I have raised questions concerning the traditional Buddhist teaching of rebirth. In various essays I express misgivings about the teaching of rebirth. It is only fair, therefore, to present the case for rebirth as advanced by a highly trained spokesman of a traditional point of view. The following is part of an interview with Geshe Lati Rinpoche in which I asked him some questions on the topic of rebirth as it is taught in his tradition.

Lati Rinpoche was born in 1922 in the eastern region of Tibet known as Kham. When he was still very young he entered the monastic life. He studied at Gaden (pronounced “ganden”) Monastery in Lhasa, where he eventually received the Geshe degree, the approximate equivalent of a Doctor of Divinity degree. After completing his Geshe degree, he attended the Tantric College of Upper Lhasa. After the Tibetan exodus in 1959, Lati Rinpoche eventually settled in the region of South India called Karnataka, where the Tibetan community has established Gaden Monastery in exile. Lati Rinpoche is the abbot of Shardzay College within this re-established Gaden Monastic complex. He is the author of Mind in Tibetan Buddhism trans., ed. and introd. Elizabeth Napper (Valois, N.Y.: Snow Lion Publications, 1980), which is Rinpoche's oral commentary on a classical Gelug treatise.¹

The conversation, which took place on September 15, 1986 was conducted with the very capable help of Rinpoche's interpreter, Mr Lobsang Gyaltsen. Mr Gyaltsen not only proved to be fluently bilingual and to speak excellent English, but he also clearly had a command of all the issues being discussed and was able to clarify matters for both Lati Rinpoche and myself. We are much indebted to him for his invaluable aid. This transcription has been abridged somewhat to avoid repetition. Also, owing to technical difficulties, some parts of the tape recording of the original conversation were inaudible or unintelligible. Some of these portions have been deleted from the following transcription, and some have been reconstructed from notes. Every effort has been made to be faithful to the original meaning of what was said even if on occasion the actual words were lost.

Interview with Lati Rinpoche

Hayes:

I understand that Rinpoche has travelled in the West on a number of occasions and given instruction in the Buddha-dharma.

Rinpoche:

I have given quite a few talks. I don't know whether or not it is proper to say that I have given many talks, but from my point of view it has been a lot.

Hayes:

In teaching the Buddha-dharma to the West has Rinpoche encountered any special problems?

Rinpoche:

I haven't met with any special problems.

Hayes:

When giving a talk to a group of Westerners, is it your experience that they ask the same kinds of questions that Tibetans would ask when you speak to them? Or are there issues that come up more frequently when you speak to Western audiences?

Rinpoche:

Let me say that I have found that most of the people who have made up my audiences in the West come from a very good educational background. When they ask me questions, I find that they tend to be very good questions. Of course I don't mean that everybody in the West asks brilliant questions, but for the most part the level of questions is very intelligent.

Hayes:

A very important part of the training of most Western intellectuals is to develop an attitude of being critical and rather skeptical. Many Western intellectuals live by the dictum “Sapiens nihil affirmat quod no probat,” which means “A wise person says nothing is true that he has not proven.” What I am wondering is whether Rinpoche has ever encountered a resistance on the part of Western intellectuals to accept things that are part of the doctrine of Buddhism.

Rinpoche:

Whenever I talk, I try to talk with reason. I try to give strong evidence for all the claims I make. And for this reason very few intelligent people have much of a problem accepting anything that I have to say.

Hayes:

Let me give one example of a teaching that occurs in Buddhism that poses a problem for many intellectuals. It is often said that we have lived before in the past and that what we are now is the consequence of actions that we have performed in previous lives. It is also said as a part of the teaching of Tibetan Buddhism in particular that the abbots of very important monasteries are the incarnations of the former abbots of those same monasteries. These claims are very difficult to believe without proof. I think the majority of Western intellectuals would feel that there is not sufficient evidence to justify believing those claims. Has Rinpoche ever encountered skepticism on this issue of rebirth and incarnate lamas? And if so, does Rinpoche have a way of explaining these teachings in a way that Western intellectuals can find them acceptable?

Rinpoche:

I can't reply in a way that all people would accept. Actually this teaching of rebirth is questionable, because there is no absolute proof that it is true. All we can do is to see whether the balance of reason weighs more for it or more against it. I think it is more reasonable to accept it than to reject it. I approach the question like this. If we look around at the beings around us, we see that they all experience different amounts of happiness. Some are very intelligent, and some are not. Some experience great joy, and some are almost incapable of ever feeling happy no matter what circumstances they are in. Everything in my experience that I know about for certain has a cause. So I assume there must be a cause also for this great difference that we observe among sentient beings. The cause is not apparent in the circumstances of their present lives. So it must be that the cause is from something in their past before they began their present lives. If someone has a propensity to be intelligent, this is something that was acquired at birth. It must come from a cause before birth. We say a being is born intelligent if in past lives it used its mind for good purposes.

I am not claiming that every Westerner who hears this kind of presentation is convinced, but they do tell me that they believe what I have to say.

Hayes:

What is the most frequently encountered question when you are speaking to Western audiences?

Rinpoche:

People always want to know why the ways of the world are as they are and who created these things. People want to know why there is so much pain and suffering in the world, and why there are so many thieves and other bad people causing so much suffering for others.

Hayes:

That reminds me of a question that was once put to me when I was giving a public lecture about Buddhism. A Jewish person in the audience asked me how the Buddhists would explain why during the Second World War in Europe so many innocent Jewish children, who had never done anything wrong to deserve punishment, were put to death in Nazi concentration camps or were left as homeless orphans. That situation was completely lacking in any justice in that so many of the victims were apparently totally innocent. How would Rinpoche answer that question if it were put to him?

Rinpoche:

The proper Buddhist answer to such a question is that the victims were experiencing the consequences of their actions performed in previous lives. The individual victims must have done something very bad in earlier lives that led to their being treated in this way. Also there is such a thing as collective karma.

Hayes:

Do you mean that the Jewish people as a whole have a special karma?

Rinpoche:

Yes. All groups have karma that is more than just the collection of the karma of the individuals in the group. For example, a group of people may decide collectively to start a war. If they act on that decision, then the group as a whole will experience the hardships of being at war. Karma is the result of making a decision to act in a certain way. Decisions to act may be made by individuals or by groups. If the decision is made by a group, then the whole group will experience the collective consequences of their decision.

Hayes:

What can an individual do to change the karma of the group that he or she belongs to?

Rinpoche:

You can change all karma through practice. You can persuade the group to adopt pure attitudes and to develop pure practices.

Hayes:

Is what constitutes purity of practice and purity of attitude the same for every group? Let's return to the example of the Jews. According to Jewish belief there are certain practices that the Jewish people should perform in order to remain pure. Other groups do not have to follow these same laws of purity. Is your suggestion that the Jews may have suffered the humiliations of the holocaust because they failed to live up to Jewish standards of purity, or rather because they did not live up to Buddhist standards of purity?

Rinpoche:

There are attitudes that all peoples regard as pure. Being kind to other people, for example. I don't know specifically about the history of the Jews.

Hayes:

Then let's talk about the Tibetans. The Tibetans have as a group suffered a great humiliation for these past several decades. Is it Rinpoche's belief that this is the consequence of impurity of practice within Tibetan culture as a whole? Is there some lesson that the rest of mankind can learn from the tragedy of your people?

Rinpoche:

I'm sure that those Tibetans who were left behind to suffer great hardships under the Chinese Communists must have done something very bad in previous lives to deserve such consequences. It could be that in former lives they tortured other people or were responsible for injustice. As a result they must now live under an unjust system.

Hayes:

That might account for those individuals. But it still does not answer the question about the collective karma of the Tibetan people. I still cannot quite see how collective karma works. It would make sense to me perhaps if a person were reborn as a Tibetan in every life. Then if he participated in a group decision in one life as a Tibetan, he could experience the consequences of that group decision as a Tibetan in a future life.

Rinpoche:

Collective karma just applies to group actions and group decisions, such as the decision to go to war. But it should not be understood as applying to individuals. For example it is not the case that a Tibetan in this life was a Tibetan in a previous life or will be a Tibetan in the future. That is not how group karma works at all. The way it works is that if a group of people decide to agree with each other and live together in harmony, then they will experience happiness. But if they decide to be in conflict with each other, then they will experience the hardships of conflict. For example, Toronto is a very beautiful city that has so many wonderful hospitals and beautiful parks and is very peaceful with very little crime. That is because the citizens of Toronto have decided collectively to be civilized people. They have made an effort in that direction. And it is because of what they have done as individuals in their past lives that the individual citizens of Toronto are so fortunate as to be able to live here.

Hayes:

I see. So is it possible that the Tibetans made some collective decision to be hostile towards the Chinese and as a consequence of that group decision were overwhelmed? Or is there any way of knowing exactly why a group of people experiences the history that unfolds for them?

Rinpoche:

It is not such a simple thing to determine all the factors involved in karma. Karmic roots are beginningless and may ripen at any time.

Hayes:

Does that mean that there is no way that an individual or a group can discover what specific actions of the past have made the present turn out as it has? Can we learn something of value from history in order to change the shape of the future?

Rinpoche:

We ordinary people cannot understand completely the great complexity of causes and conditions that are behind the consequences we feel in the present time, because they are really infinite. But what I can say is that there are patterns that we can observe. There is no certainty that the theory of karma is true. But if we impartially examine the evidence that we can observe, we see that events have causes. We see that beings who help others are happy, and we see that beings who hurt others are unhappy. So if you want to be happy, then it makes sense to help others be happy.

You can look at this whole question like this. Of course there is no certainty that we lived in the past, and there is no certainty that we shall live again in the future. These matters are beyond absolute proof. But suppose that you decide to act as if the theory of karma and consequence is true. You then decide to help other beings. This alone will make you feel very good. And it will make other beings love you. They will think highly of you, and they will be very willing to do things to make you happy and to help you when you are in distress. It may be that in addition to all these consequences of your decision to be helpful to others you may also be born into a beautiful pure land in the future life. There is no proof that this will happen, but you have nothing to lose if you act as if it will happen. On the other hand, if you choose to be very selfish and act in ways that harm others, you may run the risk of falling into hell in the future. But even if this is not what happens, it is still true that even in this very life, you will find that other beings fear you and hate you and will be unwilling to help you when you are in distress. So you see, you have nothing to lose by acting as if the theory of karma and rebirth is true. You definitely do have something to gain by acting as if it is true, even in this life. And it may even be that you have more to gain than you realize. So it is really the most intelligent thing to do to choose to be kind and compassionate and friendly to all beings and to act in the realization that all beings, just like you, want to be happy. To state the matter very briefly, it makes the most sense of all just to be civilized and to act in a civilized way.

Reflections on Lati Rinpoche's argument

One cannot help being struck at the similarity between Lati Rinpoche's discussion of karma and rebirth and Blaise Pascal's famous “wager.” Pascal argued that even though there is no definitive proof for the existence of God, the atonement of sin and beatific vision, it is still not unreasonable to believe in these doctrines. If it turns out to be true that there really is a God and an afterlife, Pascal argued, then the believer will not be disappointed, and may even be rewarded for having had faith. On the other hand, if it turns out that death brings oblivion, then the believer will still not be disappointed, for in his oblivion he will never realize that he once held a false belief.

In saying that karma and rebirth are doctrines around which one can make decisions on how to act in the present life as if they were true, Lati Rinpoche seems to place these doctrines in a mythical space, as opposed to an historical or scientific framework. Access to this mythical space can be gained, not by logical proof or through a methodical empirical observation of the sensible world, but by exercising one's imagination and then having the courage of one's imaginings.

The suspension of one's disbelief, which amounts to a willingness to think of the world as if it were a certain way, is then very similar to what one does in reading a piece of fiction. If a reader were so lacking in imagination that he could not even entertain the possibility of a land called Middle Earth, inhabited by hobbits and elves and orcs, then he could never enter into the wonderful stories told in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings ; by not being able to enter into that story, such a reader would probably not derive much pleasure from the trilogy, and, worse, might not be able to benefit by reflecting on some of the profound observations of human nature conveyed through the vehicle of myth. Of course, such a reader might be able to arrive at similar observations of human nature by some means other than fiction, and he might experience great pleasure by some means other than fiction, but he would be relatively dead to the potential joys to be gained by reading The Lord of the Rings and would, to that extent, be more limited than someone with an imagination rich enough to enter into the world of myth. Similarly, a person insufficiently imaginative to enter into the myths of karma and rebirth might very well find another means of leading an ethical and fulfilling life; it is not, in other words, strictly necessary to enter into these myths in order to be ethical. Such a person might, however, have more difficulty gaining the full benefit of Buddhist stories, and even of many Buddhist practices, than a person more willing to suspend disbelief and enter into the imaginative world of myth.

My experience has been that many Westerners still balk at accepting the doctrines of karma and rebirth. The reason for this hesitation, it seems to me, is that they expect, or perhaps even fear, that the notion of rebirth is supposed to be accepted literally as historical facts or scientific hypotheses about the natural world and that they therefore must be supported by the same kinds of evidence and precise reasoning that characterizes good historical scholarship or scientific investigation. If, however, karma and rebirth are presented to such people as myths, or as exercises in the imagination that may have the effect of enabling one to reflect on the consequences of one's actions and attitudes by imagining oneself in the situation of other people or other kinds of living being, the hesitation that such people have to talk in terms of karma and rebirth seems to diminish. Talking about the Buddha's (or even one's own) previous lives then becomes no more odious than, say, having an animated discussion about Sherlock Holmes's struggles with Moriarity or about Frodo's heroic efforts to overcome his resistance to disposing of the evil ring that gave him the power of becoming invisible. Out of such animated discussions comes much that is often surprisingly, and always immeasurably, beneficial and positive.

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Footnotes:

¹On the title page of this work, the title “Rinpoche” is spelled “Rinbochay” in conformity with conventions followed at University of Virginia.

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