Manifestation Of Desires

If the Buddhist philosophy is to rid oneself of all desires….?

Why is it then that they cling to the notion of an afterlife? Surely that represents a desire to continue on as another incarnation. Can’t they accept that death is final and that any notion of an afterlife is simply a manifestation of their ego. Do they think that they are too important to just quit cold turkey?

The previous two answers, from Alex and…well, the next answer, are much more to the point than prior answers, even if Alex’s is so deep into Buddhist philosophy as to be hard to interpret.

I tend to be rather pragmatic about these things. I’m a Zen Buddhist, and I don’t believe in what most people mean when they refer to reincarnation. The Buddha suggested his path as one that takes you beyond the cycle of rebirth, so it may have been his way of saying to the people of his time: Hey, it’ll get you where you need to go. Our goal is *not* to be reborn.

For me, personally, the idea of having past and future lives conflicts with other Zen notions of the Self. What would carry forward? Effectively, we are all living one life, so if I claim to have been a Roman gladiator, what does that even mean? Why was no one ever a Roman dishwasher?

“We are all living one life”?! Wait, I said I was a pragmatist. Well, in a sense, we’re all related, right? Even if it’s to some small pre-human group. We all share parts of our mitochondrial DNA from a single female lost in time. She’s not everyone’s mother, just everyone else’s great-to-the-nth auntie, I guess. When I say “one life” I mean that your life really didn’t have a beginning, because you are still not separate from your parents in a very real sense. (I watch my parents to see what I’m going to go through as I get older.) And it has no end, because what is it you desperately don’t want to end? Your “self” as a trajectory through time. Well, that desire has brought us nothing but wars and anguish, so how about if we gave it up?

As far as desire (or sometimes translated as delusion), they are inexhaustible. Our very striving to have them settle to a more natural level is also a desire. Dogen talks about this as the desire for enlightenment, a critical ingredient along the path.

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