Blog Post 27: Why Every Buddhist Has To Believe In Reincarnation

"Rather than thinking about what you might be forgetting, focus upon making strong aspirations in this life."

Can you have a dog for a pet and not accept that the dog will shed or that he will bark or poop and pee?

If we want to take refuge and not hold the belief in reincarnation, our situation is similar. Yes, we can always take refuge in Buddha, but Buddhism itself has three aspects.

The first aspect is the scientific aspect.

The second aspect is meditation and the philosophical part.

The third aspect is where we have a sincere acceptance of reincarnation because, without it, there is nothing to propel us towards benefitting others.

As Buddhists, we have to look at certain truths. The truth that there is a next life. That the moment we are born, we are bound to die.

We live oblivious to death because we are attached to our physical bodies. We incorrectly believe that our identity is our body. And this is not a beneficial way to understand things because this is the way to create suffering.

We must practice Buddhism to experience Buddhism. We all want to feel safe, loved, and secure, so we must feel it when we recite our refuge prayer. There is no comfort in samsara that can fill the emptiness in our hearts and souls. We are helplessly reborn due to our karma, and therefore we are helpless in samsara. We have comforts, and yet we have no security. There is no safety net. But when we take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, it is like having a haven for our bodies and souls. And that frame of mind serves us to become beneficial to others.

There are two types of mindsets. One mindset is to want to serve others beneficially. The second mindset is to want to continue to learn and practice. If this second one is our mindset, it is best to aspire to be reborn into a Pure Land. The best thing we can do in this life is always to consider the benefits we can bring to our situation.

In this current life, it is a choice as to how we want to label our experiences. But we must not believe our minds blindly because our minds are by-products of many other people's minds. Our teachers, our parents, and our grandparents all conditioned our minds when we were children. We still are continuously influenced by many other people as adults. All of our attachments and our obsessions are just reflections of our ignorance, greed, and anger. They are the sum of our own three poisons. Combined, they all create our fantasy. When it comes to dharma, we need to recognize this, know it, and experience it and then do our dharma practice free of fantasy.

Dharma Teaching by Singha Rinpoche and edited by Sandeep Nath
14 Mar 2021