Do you believe in Reincarnation?

[sh_einstein]

As Muslims, in order for a person to be a good believer, they should believe in and never object to "fate,"- be it good or evil, simply because it is predetermined by Allah (God). This is one of the basic principles of faith ("Iman") in Sunnah. I do not know of something similar in Christianity that suggests this meaning.

"Destiny" is translated as "masir" (pronounced with long /i:/). I think it borders its meaning in English, because we choose the way that results in our "destiny", so to speak.

So what do you think?

I know a little bit Arabic, I had to take it in highschool but does'nt "masir" mean return as in "Ila allah almasir" which means everybody's return is to God?

and what does "Ikhtiar" or choice mean if all of this is foreseen? Does that mean that our thoughts and what we are going to do is predictable? That makes sense.

and I always had problem with the difference between "taghdir" and "gadha"? do they mean destiny, like "va ghadara allaho kola shay'en"?

[Nikhar]

Hi Nikhar - where does that impulse come from? - if you don't mind me asking.

Of course I don't mind your asking.
And I would've answered your question for sure if I only knew what it meant. lol
Kindly rephrase your question.

PS:- I do feel that I'm such a twit at times. lol

[Paulclem]

Lol... I was not talking about me. I was talking about the world as whole. My personal ambition is to help as many people as I can... but that's a different story.

.

Where does your personal ambition come from?

[Nikhar]

Where does your personal ambition come from?

Well, I have seen some very poor people in and around the area I live. Fortunately, I have been blessed with a roof over my head and been provided with some excellent education. When you see people sleeping on roads, children merely 7 or 8 begging for food, and a mother who hugs her 2 months old child tightly to protect her from the cold in the absence of a blanket, I do think that we have come into this world to help those who can't help themselves. The excellent conditions we have been given also gives us a duty to help those who haven't been so lucky.

I know that I want to earn a loooooooot of money and distribute it all. And I guess I'm a bit selfish also. I know I would die happily if I know that I have thousands of hands praying or my safety.

Sorry if that sounds cliched or over dramatic.... but that's just me.

[Paulclem]

Well, I have seen some very poor people in and around the area I live. Fortunately, I have been blessed with a roof over my head and been provided with some excellent education. When you see people sleeping on roads, children merely 7 or 8 begging for food, and a mother who hugs her 2 months old child tightly to protect her from the cold in the absence of a blanket, I do think that we have come into this world to help those who can't help themselves. The excellent conditions we have been given also gives us a duty to help those who haven't been so lucky.

I know that I want to earn a loooooooot of money and distribute it all. And I guess I'm a bit selfish also. I know I would die happily if I know that I have thousands of hands praying or my safety.

Sorry if that sounds cliched or over dramatic.... but that's just me.

In Buddhism there's an aspiration - and a practice - called the Bodhisattva Ideal. The aim is to devote oneself to helping all sentient beings. The ultimate aspect of this aim is to help all beings become enlightened, but easing suffering hs to take place before that can happen. Are you familiar with this idea? It sounds like you have the aspiration anyway.

[Nikhar]

In Buddhism there's an aspiration - and a practice - called the Bodhisattva Ideal. The aim is to devote oneself to helping all sentient beings. The ultimate aspect of this aim is to help all beings become enlightened, but easing suffering hs to take place before that can happen. Are you familiar with this idea? It sounds like you have the aspiration anyway.

Thanks.
And no, I haven't heard of Bodhisattva Ideal. But now, I have a one word answer if some one asks about my ambition in life.

[caddy_caddy]

That is fascinating... Could the judgement really be arbitrary (i.e., based on nothing at all)?

Objection your honour! - No Billl not at all.

No it couldn't be arbitrary . Actually in the Judgment Day , although God is omniscent He called for" witnesses" .
He cannot be the Judge and the witness at the same time . Look how many witnesses He called for , how just is He .
The angles
The prophets , every prophet will be a witness on his nation .
The location where I did every deed.
Time when I did every deed.
The scripture where every deed I did is written by the angels .
MY tongue,
MY hands .
MY legs or feet .
My skin .

This is only one verse among many that tackles this issue : On the Day when their tongues, their hands, and their legs (or feet) will bear witness against them as to what they used to do.(Al -Nour :24)

I know a little bit Arabic, I had to take it in highschool but does'nt "masir" mean return as in "Ila allah almasir" which means everybody's return is to God?
Yes it does .

and what does "Ikhtiar" or choice mean if all of this is foreseen? Does that mean that our thoughts and what we are going to do is predictable? That makes sense.
He can predict and foresee what we will choose .

and I always had problem with the difference between "taghdir" and "gadha"? do they mean destiny, like "va ghadara allaho kola shay'en"?

Gadhar is the noun , ghadara with a stressed /d/is the verb.
Yes it is destiny or fate . Doom as they said has always a negative connotation .
We say Doom's Day or Judgment's Day not destiny's day or fate's day . At that day there will be a horrible destruction and ruin on the earth .Fate and
destiny could be both good and bad .
There is a rule in Arabic ;when they come seperately in verses they mean the same thing ;when they come together in one verse , there would be a difference in meaning .

[billl]

No it couldn't be arbitrary . Actually in the Judgment Day , although God is omniscent He called for" witnesses" .
He cannot be the Judge and the witness at the same time . Look how many witnesses He called for , how just is He .
The angles
The prophets , every prophet will be a witness on his nation .
The location where I did every deed.
Time when I did every deed.
The scripture where every deed I did is written by the angels .
MY tongue,
MY hands .
MY legs or feet .
My skin .

This is only one verse among many that tackles this issue : On the Day when their tongues, their hands, and their legs (or feet) will bear witness against them as to what they used to do.(Al -Nour :24)

When you say "will of God, that can't be changed," I assume you are talking about the "judgement," and not the acts that are judged. (I am thinking that, at least in the area of "destiny" the person has some sort of choice about things, with God's foreknowledge being somehow different from predetermination by God).

This is a more commonly used sense of "judgement" in English, I think. I had thought you were referring to an Arabic word for "fate" and/or "doom" and/or "destiny" which some translator was translating as "judgement." I had been suggesting that equating "judgement" with events pre-determined by God (fate, doom) would seem to make the whole thing arbitrary. (e.g. This person shall die as an infant, therefore they are judged as one who should live a short life.) Again, I guess "destiny" is maybe the important category, here.

[caddy_caddy]

They use judged , commanded , ordained for the predetermined. They all different forms of the same word : alkada' . For example,"It's a thing ordained (Maryam : 21)
For the other word : alkadar , the foreknowledge
"And the commandement of Allah is certain destiny "( Al-ahzab;38)
In another translation : and the commandement of Allah is a decree determined .
This is exactly as you are saying

I am thinking that, at least in the area of "destiny" the person has some sort of choice about things, with God's foreknowledge being somehow different from predetermination by God).

[billl]

They use judged , commanded , ordained for the predetermined. They all different forms of the same word : alkada' . For example,"It's a thing ordained (Maryam : 21)
For the other word : alkadar , the foreknowledge
"And the commandement of Allah is certain destiny "( Al-ahzab;38)
In another translation : and the commandement of Allah is a decree determined .
This is exactly as you are saying

Interestingly, this matches the view (in a way) of a prominent atheist, Daniel Dennett. Of course, he doesn't posit a God, but he is convinced of determinism. He also uses the term "free will", but for him, it refers to an individual's relative capacity to consider a variety of choices. He believes, however, that the choice ultimately made is pre-determined (e.g. our thought are just shiftings of chemicals and the mechanistic firings of neurons in our brain).

So, just as in the sense of "destiny" we have been discussing, an individual with free will "chooses" more so than does a single-cell organism that has a more simple and more-easily predictable set of responses. However, it is still, ultimately pre-determined by the preceding course of mechanistic events in the brain. Almost as if the exercise of free will is a mere judgement handed down, from the perspective of the material world and natural laws.

I think Dennett's is an interesting view, but I don't want to suggest that I am convinced by it.

[laidbackperson]

I believe in reincarnation very strongly though I have never had any paranormal experiences about it.

I believed in God from early days but could see lot of anomalies and wrong in the world. This was at times dismaying and a bit perplexing.

Reincarnation concept helps in seeing the turmoil state and God more clearly.
I started believing in reincarnation really after reading Avatar Meher Baba’s work. It fitted well with my logical reasoning.

Seeing the world as it is presently, or as it was at any time, I take it as God’s plan to give a person, repeated lives, to allow him or her to remove one’s imperfections and become a perfectly pure person, without letting the person remember, what happened in previous lives.

Letting the person know what happened in earlier lives or who-is-now-who in the present life would be catastrophic.

However, what we carry forward from our previous life is our karmas, and perhaps our fears, courage, cunningness, smartness etc. I like to think that we are born with an intrinsic nature which we get owing to our previous lives. That is the reason why I think we keep finding some kids completely different in nature from their parents or their environment. We will find brave kids to timid parents, genius kids to average parents, cruel kids to kind and believing parents, God believing kids to atheist parents, and no amount of environment or external methods seems to be working on them. We feel exasperated that why it is so. Kids may slowly change over their lives and parents too may learn something from their kids, and I take all these interactions as a God’s meticulous plan to see that each one of us, through thousands or millions of lives, through ups and downs, through misery and happiness, begin to realize the vanity of worldliness and materialistic life, and becoming free of worldly desires, one just start longing only for union with God.

Probably that is what must have occurred to Gautam Buddha, who was born a prince and renounced everything to know himself. Why don’t all of us also feel that strong urge to know oneself?

There can be few more points.

First, we see a lot of wrong in the world. Being born blind or poor or dying young, is it previous life’s bad karmas. I don’t know. But I take it as a God’s plan to train you to eventually believe in Him. We shout ‘unfair’ because, we see only the present moment, only this life, but try to see God as someone who has seen the present sufferer through more than thousands of previous lives. Someone who has seen the same person as king and beggar, man and woman, deformed and able bodied, beautiful and ugly, fair and dark, killer and victim, and seen all this over and over again. Thus if we too know the full history of this person then we will not crib that why he is born blind in this life. I like to believe in the saying that ‘God loves you more than anybody can love you and will stick with you always’. As you eat and drink, read this or that, sleep, jog, scheme right or wrong things, love and hate God never leaves you for a single moment.

We also see wrong people enjoying life till they die and right people living hard life and dying bad deaths. I take God as keeping each moment’s account of everyone’s deeds, thoughts and action and doing full justice in the new lives.

Now, how many of us really deserve a place in Heaven, if there is really such a place - place with all unimaginable pleasures. How many of us are perfectly pure beings who have not sinned at all and are not affected by jealousy, lust, anger, laziness, greed etc. God, if you decide to become strict, I think only a small rare percentage will get a ticket to Heaven.

Me, definitely not.

So if it is only one life then almost all of us will end up in Hell forever.
I do not expect a benevolent and merciful God, wisest beyond words to do so.
Also, if we have only one life and with so many births and deaths occurring year after year all these years, would not the overall population of dead persons or resulting souls be increasing continuously in Hell ?

With God, who is worshipped as limitless anything can be possible, but I like to think that better explanation is rebirths of the same person again and again. You will say, if it is just recycling then how come our population in earth has increased from what it was say 1000 years ago.

The answer lies probably in what Avatar Meher Baba explained in ‘God Speaks’. Prior to taking birth as a human, a person has gone through stage of taking births in following forms in descending order like animals, bird, fishes, worms, plants, metals and stones. However, once you appear as human in earth, you keep taking births as human, life after life, twisting and untwisting, getting and loosing impressions repeatedly, till you become free of desires in the world and are ready for union with God. You have to take millions of births in human form before you start turning towards God permanently.

That is the reason why I think some people are wired to believe very easily in God and why heart of others are locked in present life. But ultimately everyone will go to God.

Lastly, when I heard about Meher Baba for first time through a colleague, I scoffed at the whole idea, but curious, I started reading His literature.
What He said and what people who were with Him said about Him and their experiences with Him.

I always believed that there has to be only one God for entire humanity.

So I always felt baffled that if God is one then, who amongst Christ and Muhammad and Krishna and Zoroaster and Buddha and others was truer or stronger..

I believed that evolution theory could not be totally discarded.

I believe love has to be uppermost eventually.

Reading Meher Baba, I begin to see things in new light which I could map well with my own reasoning and experiences in the world.

I begin to think God having wild humor and take this world as God’s playground.

[blazeofglory]

In Hinduism there are so many accounts of incarnations. God reincarnates when the need for it intensifies, and when the world loses uprightness and when wretchedness becomes rampant and people become off course then God has to reincarnate or be born. This has beautifully expressed in the Gita. Rama, Krishna and the like were reincarnations of Vishnu

And the majority believes in it in a Hindu country and I am torn between belief and disbelief for my age is like that and I have to listen to both atheists and theists, read science and religion

[Paulclem]

Interesting post Laidback. You seem to indicate a leaning towards Hinduism, as your beliefs don't accord with the Buddhist worldview.

I would also point out that Buddha is not considered a God, by Buddhists, as there is no belief in a creator God.

There are often clear distinctions between those with a scientific outlook, and those witha religious outlook on this forum, and it can be difficult for believers to argue against the empiricists with what is subjective experience versus evidence based views.

Buddhism is often considered to be a philosophy - by non-Buddhists i might point out, but it has the flexibility to accept science, evolution, physics - in fact some of the teachings include descriptions of reality that accord very well with the descriptions by physicists I hear - and can work as a belief - including the belief in reicarnation - alongside science.

[blazeofglory]

In fact amalgamating science with faith is a fruitless endeavor and we live in the age of science and technology at the same time we cannot refuse to accept religions. However at times we absurdly try to fuse the two together. The way they coined Christian Science or the like. They are polar opposites and this incorporation of these two opposite directions does no more than create a mass of confusion. Revisit this

[Paulclem]

In fact amalgamating science with faith is a fruitless endeavor and we live in the age of science and technology at the same time we cannot refuse to accept religions. However at times we absurdly try to fuse the two together. The way they coined Christian Science or the like. They are polar opposites and this incorporation of these two opposite directions does no more than create a mass of confusion. Revisit this

There are plenty of religious scientists, but I think that religion and science deal with different aspects of life.

In referring to Buddhism I was making the point that there is room for science as far as it goes. For example it is demonstrably true that meditation calms the mind; it has been experimentally investigated. Thesame will be true for Hindu meditative practices too.

The other thing is that, although there is a different emphasis on proof, Buddhism encourages investigation and examination which are features of the scientific method.