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Isthene Wrote:

What is the difference between reincarnation and rebirth?

Nirguna the Heart Wrote:
Reincarnation is the belief that you have a soul or some divine essence that is continuously put into new bodies each lifetime. That you have some immortal, indestructible core self that transfers from life to life.

Rebirth rejects the idea of the soul and adopts the view that no composite thing is permanent, but its constituent elements are neither created nor destroyed, but are in a constant state of change. A lake becomes a cloud becomes snow becomes a glacier, then melts into a river and flows into a lake again. There is no core essence of that water that is being transfered from the body of the lake into the body of the cloud, there is just a continuous flow of "water".

The Waking Raven Wrote:
Ok, I've been trying to make sense of all this. Having Buddhism still being pretty new to me, I can't grasp the concept of this. I'm atheist, I want to strive to be a better person all the time, but since I left Christianity it sort of left a bitter impact on me because of the feeling of being lied to. Now that I'm beginning to understand Buddhism, it's becoming more enticing. Due to the fact is relies more on understanding than faith. Love is great.

But what's the difference with reincarnation and rebirth? I thought they both meant once you die, you come back as another being/person. Ok so I've come to understand reincarnation is about having a soul, and rebirth.. well I really don't know since I thought it was the same. That's what I want to know. Wouldn't believing in rebirth require faith? It's not scientifically proven, or proven in any other sort of matter. Not as far as I know anyway.

Is the process of rebirth dying, then coming back as another person without any remembrance of your past self? What's the point in not wanting to reach nirvana as soon as you could then? It seems if you wait for another life to reach it, you might not even consider Buddha's teachings and live another lifestyle or faith because you have no memory of what you learned before.

Maybe I'm way off here. Like I said, I don't completely understand everything about it. It would be great if someone could clear this up for me. Thanks.

I posted that question over a week ago on another topic, and no one replied. So, I decided to make my own thread so people would actually look at it. Could someone please explain my question?

The way I've always heard it explained, there is a difference between reincarnation and rebirth.
Reincarnation, being the rebirth of consciousness into a new body. Rebirth, being the constant change of your mind. For one moment, you may be entirely happy, but something brought a change, be it external, or be it an internal joy, your mind is changed, reborn into a different state.
I could be very wrong. Not sure. Thats the way I've always heard the difference between the two.
There are several ways to look at the logic/faith-based question. For one, the Buddha was renowned for using examples that would make sense applied to an individuals life. Is this the case with the Indians, and reincarnation?
All the same, the Eastern world pretty much accepted reincarnation without a doubt. The Buddha had accepted several social norms, in my opinion (see my thread, Sexism in Buddhism) though a few may disagree, and it's in my conviction that reincarnation could very well be something similar.
All the same, Buddhism is an experiential belief. We are told by the Buddha not to accept anything blindly, but to test EVERYTHING the Buddha, or anyone else for that matter, tells us, and to accept only what we feel is right. Buddhism is a logic-based belief-system, and if science found a way to prove or disprove reincarnation, we are to accept that, if it seems right to us.
Forgive me, I seem to be rambling. Either way, Buddhism may or may not have components that are simply culturally-based. That doesn't matter, really. The Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, and the Middle Way, are all still very plausible, and very applicable to everyday life. Reincarnation, in my opinion, is not so easy to discern.

How does that prove that it cant be real???

There are many worlds in the Buddhist universe... confused

Hmm.......interesting. Well based on Nirguna the Heart's description I got the sense that rebirth is similar to reincarnation in this respect; with reincarnation, you have a unique soul all your own and when you die it is separated from your body and put into another body.

With rebirth it's like you do have something of a soul, but it is made up of many particles, like atoms maybe, and it is not YOUR unique soul. And when you die, all those pieces that made up your "soul" changed into some other form and mixed with the collective of other "souls" in some big mixing pot in the sky. Then when you are born again, you are born with a new "soul" that may or may not have some of those pieces from your old "soul" because all of the pieces have been mixed up to create something new.

Just like the analogy used of water...when you take a glass of water and pour it into a big bowl of more water, it is not the glass of water anymore. It is just water. So maybe with rebirth we do have something of a soul but it is not our individual soul, it is a collective soul made up of parts of everyone else in the universe.

In case non-Buddhists were wondering, there are generally thought to be 5 or 6 (sometimes 7) states of sentient existence among Buddhist scholars: devas (godlike or celestial beings), asuras (titans/wrathful gods/demigods), humans (sometimes there are said to be 4 vastly different kinds of humans, of which we are the least), animals or "brutes," pretas (hungry-ghosts), and hell-beings; the optional seventh could be beings stuck in the intermediate state of Bardo (to Tibetan Buddhists). Sometimes a variety of other creatures from Indian or East Asian folklore also make their way into the cosmology, such as Nagas and Scent-Eater fairies. Note that non-sentient lifeforms like plants and inanimate objects like rocks are excluded: sentience is required for the "rebirth" of the thought-continuum.

Of course, only two of the states are readily visible to us: humans and animals. It is generally thought that "beings with overlapping or similar karma can perceive one another, those without cannot," meaning that most people are sufficiently unlike the "supernatural" beings such that they are imperceptible.

Since the existence of most classes of sentient beings mentioned in Buddhist literature cannot be objectively proven, skepticism is natural. Thankfully the belief in these different states of rebirth is useful to many Buddhists regardless of whether they are literally true, since visualizing the sufferings of the beings is used in meditation to cultivate compassion, instill a weariness with the prospect of eternal rebirth as suffering beings, and serve as a reminder that the excessive "vices" can have long-term consequences even beyond this life.

Personally I see no reason why a cycle of rebirth could not be sustained in a universe where humans and lower animals (and extraterrestrial equivalents) are the only sentient beings. Both human and animal diversity of experience is vast enough to cover a great range of karmic backgrounds.