CrankyBuddhist   the learning never ends …

One of the things about living in the SF Bay Area is that the seasons of the year are all twisted. That story used to demonstrate the possibility of reincarnation, you know the one, about the leaves falling from the trees in the fall and sprouting again in the spring doesn’t really apply here. Well, it does and it doesn’t. It depends on which tree you happen to be looking at.

So while people in other areas of the country are contemplating sweeping snow and driving on ice, I’ve been going out into the yard to play in the dirt. We had a good rain here a couple of weeks ago so things started to sprout. I’ve been showering the yard with water on occasion, ever since the rain, in hopes that the bulbs will soon bloom. The garden out in front of the house is sort of a mystery. No one really knows what exactly is planted there. The Calla Lilies are obvious, and so is the Rosemary and Heliotrope and the Japanese Maple Tree. But the bulbs are starting shoot leaves and some Cyclamens appeared on the porch and those will go into pots.

It feels good to get my hands in the dirt, planting something that will grow and live and give pleasure to all those who walk by …

While contemplating the last question, my flow of thought went on to memory.

Why don’t we carry clear memories from one life to the next? If a Lama can come back into a new body and claim his singing bowl from his last incarnation, then why can’t I come back in my next life and claim CrankyBuddhist.com and continue posting as cranky who is now whatever my new name is?

Like, clearly claim it, not ‘oh, I have some feeling that I’m connected to this project, I should go work on it’ muddled memory.

I’ve asked myself this question before, but I never took the answer to the ends that I have been in the last week or so. And now it’s become clear as to why we don’t clearly remember past lives, or remember them enough to lay claim to their projects and deeds.

My mind ran through a lot of possibilities and complications, and instead of listing them, I’ll just leave you with the thought for your own contemplation.

The other night I found some people out on the back deck having a barbeque. OK, it was the downstairs neighbor and a few close friends. It was late and they asked me to join them for desert, which, of course, I did. Shrug. Why not? As we sat enjoying the lemon cake and some kind of crazy jamaican sorbet, the conversation meandered, as all conversations do, and somehow the path got us onto the subject of reincarnation.

One particular person said that on occasion he has contemplated the possiblity of reincarnation, but he couldn’t wrap his head around the numbers. He queried that if the human population is gowing by leaps and bounds, where are all the people coming from, where have they been, if there are over 6 billion humans on the planet now, why haven’t there always been over 6 billion people??

(I really like having conversations with this particular person, btw.)

My answers were a cross between New Age dogma and Buddhist thought.

One being that when we pass out of this life, our energy goes into a pool and from the pool, energy is taken to create a new life. Therefore, what we are now is not always what we will be.

The second being that not all people, souls, whatever, are incarnated into a body at the same time. Some are waiting for the proper moment. Some are lost in the bardo (haven’t found their way back yet). Some people come back instantly, while others may wait centuries. Time also works a little differently when we aren’t in a physical body – so what we picture as waiting a few generations to return may only be a blip in cosmic time. In any case, it’s a flow of humanity and not a concrete number.

Someone else mentioned that because some beings come back as animals, and since some animals are becoming extinct or their populations are declining, there are less possible chances to incarnate as an animal and more possible chances to incarnate as a human.

What do you think? Is the idea of reincarnation and how it hapens written in stone for you? Or do you contemplate the possibilities of how it all works and what the process is?

Or, is it not even worth thinking about?

I’ve been obsessively thinking about my next life, ridiculous as that may be. It’s only recently that I have given in to the idea of having a next life. Not that I don’t believe in reincarnation, I do. I just thought that this life would be my last one. So I started to wonder about it. I contemplate it. What am I going to look like? Could I possibly not have to worry about sudden weight gains? Did my constant complaining about my parents in this life doom me to choose even more dysfunctional ones in the next? When will this next life happen? Immediately? Far into the future? Maybe death is just going from this body into a new one being born at the moment of my passing? Maybe there is no rest in between. Can I inherit the things I love in my next life? Will I keep my interests? The thought of losing my awareness is distressing. It took me a long time to learn French. What would I look like as a Latina? Can I maintain my happiness from this life into the next? Maybe I will come back as a lower life form? Maybe I’ve been a dog in the past and that’s why I love and understand them so much in this one.

I just want my next life to be a continuation of this one, only better.