In response to my last post, someone asked me, "is reincarnation considered metaphorically or literally?"

Neither. There is no such thing.

The Buddha did not believe in reincarnation (those who think he did do not understand the sutras).

Dogen did not believe in reincarnation.

Buddhism is not about believing in things.

The idea that we have fixed, permanent existence - a soul - and that bodies are like clothes that we simply discard, is just primitive, magical thinking. It is a fairy tale designed to comfort frightened, childish egos, and therefore it is the exact opposite of the Buddha Dharma.

The Buddha taught anatta - no self. Nothing reincarnates, because nothing incarnates to begin with. Nothing comes, nothing goes, everything changes. Who would reincarnate? The person we are now? The person we'll be next year? The person we were last year? We will not exist in another body, because we do not even exist in our present body. We are an aggregate of constantly-shifting phenomena, and all that gives us a sense of permanence is our memory, recorded in the brain. What gives us our fear of death, and our desire for an afterlife, is our ego's neurotic attachment to believing in its own existence. The practice of Buddhism liberates us from the prison of self.

There is rebirth, but not reincarnation. All that is reborn, moment to moment, is habitual, conditioned thinking, and the consequences of what has happened already... which brings us to the other most understood aspect of the Buddha's teaching - karma.

People who come to Buddhist practice, but still like to make everything about themselves, love to talk about karma, their own and other people’s. To a mindset conditioned to believe in an omnipotent parent, karma is a system of punishment and reward - do bad things, and the deity will punish you; do good things and the deity will reward you.

This is what psychiatrists call "magical thinking." It is not karma.

The law of karma is this: every volitional action has consequences. The action itself is called karma; the consequence of the action is called vipaka.

What happens to you is the result of something that has preceded it. If you jump out of a top-floor window (karma), you are most likely going to be splattered all over the sidewalk below (vipaka). This is not because someone or something is punishing you for jumping out of the window - rather, hitting the sidewalk is a result of the fall, which is a result of your jumping out of the window. Your decision to jump out of the window is a result of previous karma and vipaka on your part.

Cause and effect, not punishment and reward.

But it’s common to hear people talk about how it’s someone’s “karma” to live in an impoverished country, or have a debilitating illness, or any other predicament. This shows a sad lack of any understanding, let alone awakening.

Such people use the word “karma” as an umbrella that covers all causes and all effects, and they do not distinguish the volitional from the random. But karma is only one of the five niyamas; there is also dharma (the laws of nature), irthu (seasonal changes and climate), biija (genetic inheritance) and chitta (the will of the mind, which, contrary to some superstitious beliefs, has nothing to do with psychic abilities, but simply means what it says).

So there are things that are governed by our choices (karma – volitional behavior), and things we have no control over at all. If we could control our lives through our karma, we could avoid all pain, but that is not the way the universe is. As my teacher says, "Sometimes shit just happens." In the chaos of our lives, we have little control over what happens to us, but, if we are fortunate enough to be mentally sound, we can choose how we respond to what happens to us. Our karma and our chitta are our own, so it is up to us whether to suffer in the dream of samsara, or whether to awaken.