I've heard parents having to reserve a slot in kindergarten even before childbirth. Very soon parents may be required to reserve a soul even before considering having kids!
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Recycling souls
I was intrigued by Buddhism and contemplated converting to the religion recently. I have always heard that it is takes a very practical take on life which is a fresh breath of air amidst all the fanaticism around. As a start, I figured I should start with understanding the religion better. It didn't however take me long before I hit the first obstacle. Buddhism is big on rebirth. In fact, one of man's biggest objectives in life appears to be escaping rebirth. But I've never considered this practical at all. On one hand, when we can't even get ourselves to recycle paper, recycling souls seems far fetched. More importantly, if every birth is borne out of a recycled soul, how do you explain increase in population. On top of that, some of us apparently escape rebirth, further worsening the shortage.
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3 comments:
Did you confirm that Buddhism assumes like to like re-birth constraint in terms of species? Maybe you were an ant in your previous birth or a monkey? Maybe that explains the extinction of species to accomodate more humans??
Apparently you didn't read much Buddhism. One of the central doctrines is of Buddhism is Anatta. Simply put, there is no immortal personal soul.
Anonymous - Obviously, I make that pretty clear I "started" reading Buddhism. In fact the blog was primarily about Anatta - which doesn't explain where souls for an ever increasing population comes from?
Crime Master has a good hypothesis - quite plausible. I'll be doubly careful to not step on any ant - next thing you know, there's a human reusing that ant's soul! I don't want to my bit for population growth!
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