Rethinking the Term “Rebirth”
26 November, 2010
From Dharmadasa Bhikkhu:
Recently I was trying to explain the difference between re-becoming and re-birth, as I understand the terms. The latter term, in my opinion, is from a misunderstanding of the Buddha’s teaching, but it has become generally accepted, without reflection. The Pali term in question is “punabbhava”. You will not find the Buddha talking about “puna-jaati” at all in the Pali Canon. Puna-jaati would be the Pali translation of “re-brith”. Punabbhava on the other hand, could be translated and I think would be best translated “re-becoming”.
Due to all conditioned things being impermanent, it is impossible that something could experience the same birth again. No, each birth is different, or the being born each time, is different. Therefore a being could not have a “re-birth”. Of course one could be born as a human, god, devil etc many times, but one would be (the birth would be) different each time.
But if we understand becoming as a process which leads to birth, each time a different birth, we could see that the process of becoming could be the same each time. Therefore we can undergo the process many times, again and again, thus “re-becoming” or “again-becoming” leading to a different birth each time.
This can be likened to the process of cooking a cake. The process has to be repeated each time one wants to cook a cake. The ingredients may change a little depending on the type of cake one wanted, but even if we wanted to cook a banana cake every time, the resulting cake would never be the same as the one before. Though of course there would be basic similarities, otherwise we couldn’t say a “banana” cake etc.
Thus we would have “re-becoming” leading to a different birth each time and many births [and deaths] in the cycling within Samsaara.
Please see also Mechanics of Kamma and Rebirth and Kamma as a Sack of Seeds
