Can Humanity Change?: J. Krishnamurti in Dialogue With Buddhists by Jiddu Krishnamurti

Author:Jiddu Krishnamurti [Krishnamurti, Jiddu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781590300725
Amazon: 1590300726
Publisher: Shambhala
Published: 2003-11-10T23:00:00+00:00

5. Life after Death

Fifth Conversation with the Buddhist Scholar

Walpola Rahula, and with Phiroz Mehta and Others

KRISHNAMURTI: Sir, your question was whether there is life after death.

WALPOLA RAHULA: May I say a few words about it? I want to ask you this because, as far as I know, all religions agree in assuming the existence of life after death. Buddhism and Hinduism, of course, assume that there is not just one life, but many lives before and after the present one. That is Hindu and Buddhist teaching. But as far as I know, Christianity considers that there is just one life after death, either in hell or in heaven.

K: Yes, sir, Muslims too.

WR: Muslims too. I don’t know very much about the others, but the religions I have mentioned consider that there is life after death. I’m not sure, but I think Zoroastrianism does too. And of course, in all these religions, except Buddhism, there is the soul, self, atman, an unchanging, everlasting, permanent substance in the human being, which transmigrates or is reincarnated. Buddhism does not accept such a self, atman or soul or ego that is eternal, permanent, everlasting, unchanging. Buddhism sees the human being as composed of five psycho-physical aggregates or, to use the Buddhist terms, name and form.

K: Name and form.

WR: Those are terms that you use very often. “Name” means the mental qualities, and “form” is the physical body. But according to Buddhism, these are all energies or forces. And the Buddhist view is that what is called death is the nonfunctioning of the body.

K: Yes.

WR: But that nonfunctioning of the body does not mean the nonfunctioning of all other qualities and energies, like desire, the will to become, to become more and more, and all that. They will continue as long as man is imperfect, so long as he has not seen the truth. Once man sees the truth, he is perfect, and there is no desire for becoming, because there is nothing to become. But while man is imperfect he always has desire and will. And, as you pointed out this morning, he thinks he has time to become more and more perfect and so on.

So for him, because he is not perfect, there is rebirth. But according to Buddhism, whatever continues is not one unchanging substance, but cause and effect, in just the same way, the Buddha says, as we die and are reborn every moment. So in Buddhism it is wrong to say “reincarnation,” because there is nothing to incarnate. Neither is “transmigration” a good term. And we often say nowadays “rebirth,” which is not quite correct either. The Buddhist term in Pali is punabbhava, which means re-becoming, the unbroken continuity of becoming. That is the Buddhist view. The question is asked very often, in many Buddhist texts, is it the same person or another person? The traditional and classical Buddhist answer is Na ca so, na ca anno—“Neither he nor another.” That is the process of continuity, “neither he nor another.”

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