Reincarnation and Recurrence...4
The most experienced and authentic of Western Buddhists, Alexandra David-Neel, had the courage to state that Buddhists who accept the doctrine of the inexistence of the ego could not at the same time believe in the popular notion of reincarnation.* Since the former is the core of the Buddha's teaching, and the latter universal in the East, it appears to be a case of 'should' not rather than 'could' not, and only among the elite a case of 'do' not.
Physics, having arrived via the laboratory, the microscope, higher mathematics, and two thousand five hundred years of reasoning by means of a comparison of the opposites, at the conclusions enunciated by the Buddha, it would seem to be desirable to establish the sense in which the concept underlying the popular notion of reincarnation can be, or must be, a fact.
It has been pointed out that recurrence is the relatively easily understood form of that fact, that the concept of parallel lives represents a step nearer to an accurate understanding, but may we not add that the 'fact' itself is simply that there is no need either for reincarnation or for recurrence - for neither incarnation nor occurrence ever ceases nor ever could cease.* * *
Good Heavens! Can't we take the trouble to read the Bhagavad Gita?
'There never was a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor any of these kings. Nor is there any future in which we shall cease to be.' (B.G. II. 12.)
*'La majorité des Bouddhistes qui ne comprennent pas la doctrine touchant l'inexistence d'un ego ont repris l'ancienne idée hindoue de la reincarnation d'un espirit toujours le même.'
(Article by Madame A. David Neel in 'Essais sur le Bouddhisme en général et sur le Zen en partculier' - Robert Linssen, T. II, p. 157)
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