Rebirth, Morality and Retribution

Reincarnation is a Hindu concept that the Buddha refuted. What is interesting, however, is that Buddhists seem to hang on to that idea. In the West, reincarnation may be renamed as “rebirth.” But the main idea stays the same — watch out for your actions and karma, for there may be serious consequences. Buddhists continue to believe in the Six Realms. The six realms are:

1. The Realm of Gods (or devas)
2. The Realm of Humans
3. The Realm of Asuras (angry gods)
4. The Realm of Animals
5. The Realm of Hungry Ghosts
6. The Realm of Hell

The belief is that the realm you will be born into in your next life depends on your accumulated karma. Do you really want to be reborn as a pig or a hungry ghost? The problem with this belief is that it implicitly assumes the existence of a soul or some kind of continuing consciousness that will be reborn. It is this soul or rebirth consciousness that will have the necessary memory and retain the accumulated karma. Yet, Buddha taught a doctrine of no soul and no self. There is obviously a big contradiction.

Someone familiar with the writing of secular Buddhist, Stephen Batchelor, said that Batchelor argued that the Buddha taught rebirth as “skillful means” because it was a…