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Reincarnation versus rebirth: reply to J. H. Spencer’s

"Emptiness and the One re-evaluating Buddhist and

Platonic compatibility" (Online Journal Forum, issue 3,

2003, International Society for Neo-platonic Studies).

J. H. Spencer’s objective is to break down the cultural barriers which exist between

the traditions of East and West; i.e. specifically Buddhist and Platonic thought. In

doing this, he seeks to promote a greater understanding and appreciation of the

similarities between them. In his attempt, he draws from a wide number of different,

and in some cases mutually conflicting philosophers’ views: Plato, Plotinus, Pseudo

Dionysus, as well as the traditions of Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism. He does

this in order to show that there is a fundamental unity between their metaphysical

views, and that (in showing this essential compatibility) a sympathetic view on the

nature of ultimate reality can be demonstrated.

In adopting this position, J. H. Spencer takes a position similar to the Theosophists

of the 19th century, who promulgated that all religions are essentially one, and that

such traditions spring from a primal wisdom source termed "the truth". In

attempting this perennial philosophical approach, he makes no attempt to prove

cross cultural influences between Indian and Greek ideas; by arguing for common

trade links, which might have facilitated a cross cultural diaspora of philosophical

ideas. His concern is to focus only on the apparent consistencies of the philosophical

traditions. He does, thereby, utilise a syncretic approach; seeking to reconcile

differences of doctrine with a variety of theories and systems of thought. In doing

this, however, he does not pay enough attention to the differing traditions from

which these reconciliatory explanations arise. Neither does he consider the

development of these ideas in terms of a historical response, nor generally does he

consider the historical context sufficiently. His concern is only to explain away

inconsistencies with any number of disparate and different traditions to suit his

purpose for compatibility. This mix and match approach is often used, in spite of the

fact that some of the traditions quoted arose as a direct critical response to earlier

philosophical views, whilst others arose within separate and distinct cultures.

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The trade links and the Hellenisation of some parts of India (due to Alexander's

conquests) might suggest cross cultural influences in the 2nd century A.D. onwards-

as is apparent in Neo-platonic texts. However, the authors of that time, who depict

for example Socrates discussing philosophy with Indian sages in the market place, in

order to suggest an influence from India, are generally considered to be doing no

more than merely following a fashionable trend of the time. Such sources cannot be

considered accurate historical testimony, nor can they be considered indicative of

Indian philosophical ideas merging, or affecting, the Greek ideas of the 5th century

BC. This equally applies vice versa.

Martin West in his "Greeks and The Orient" makes it pretty clear that the pre-

Socratics might have been influenced by certain Babylonian ideas. He traces some of

the influences back as far as the pre-Thalian views of Pherecydes. However, his thesis

tends to the view that the Eastern influences largely died out by the time of Plato,

whilst they underwent resurgence in the later Neo-platonic traditions. The argument

might well be sustained therefore that Plato’s Indian influence might have been

facilitated via the Italian School of the Pythagoreans, because it was their master who

was reputed to have visited at one time. Yet the authenticity of this supposed visit is

again only indicative of the fashionable association of the two cultures ascribed to

later sources, most notably in Iamblichus, and the general feeling of West leads him

to argue for the decline of an Eastern influence during the 6th and 5th centuries BC.

This coupled with the comments of Herodotus, concerning the manner in which the

Greeks took on board foreign religious ideas, at least as far as funeral rituals were

concerned, leads to the conclusion that although the Greeks were disparate in their

religious views, as is evident by the diversity of a great number of small local cults

originating from the East- cults such as the Dionysian Thracian cult- they generally

weren’t open to accepting, by the classical period at any rate, ideas which were

considered to have been barbaric and uncivilised in comparison to their own.

Hinduism is characterised by its willingness to adopt and incorporate a variety of

religious beliefs into its philosophical cannon, but little is known with certainty as to

the possibility of whether the Orphic belief in reincarnation was incorporated during

the 6th century B.C., as it was by the Pythagoreans. However, what can be said with

certainty, at least concerning reincarnation, is that the first evidence of it in Greek

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and Indian literature indicates a contemporary arising in both Vedic and

Orphic/Pythagorean sources in the 6th century B.C. However, the scholarly debate as

to the possibility or the specifics of a cross cultural diaspora is still very much

undetermined.

Those general points aside, Spencer suggests that whilst the doctrine of anatta

cannot be viewed as comparable with Greek ideas of psuche, the continuum process,

a process underlying the doctrine of rebirth, is suggestive of compatibility. He draws

this association specifically between Buddhism and the Greek idea of palingenesia.

Although the notion of karma appears broadly similar, as actions determine the

nature of the rebirth in both cases, there is no evidence to suggest that Buddhist

punabbhava and Plato's palingenesia are compatible on specifics. This is

particularly so because they are based on conflicting psychological interpretations.

For example, in Buddhism, the notion of continuity for rebirth does not require any

notion of an immortal soul as everlasting and unchanging. It is more an aggregation

of reassembled feeling tone complexes (skandhas) over proceeding lives. These are

not necessarily identical with the preceding life, for they are distinct, but they yet

form a continuum or stream with the past life. This process focuses primarily on the

nature, or limitations of consciousness, and is predetermined by actions which result

in karma, and which then influence the next life.

None of this requires any notion of an underlying, unchanging, immortal principle

for the process, unless one is prepared to equate the cause of samsara with psuche,

which is clearly a misnomer. For Plato, however, the immortal soul must exist as a

continuity and primary cause for the process to be, and it is this immortal soul which

underlies and carries with it the karmic consequences determining the next life.

Whilst Spencer is correct about the incompatibility of atman and psuche, he fails to

appreciate the nature of process requires the two incompatible principles to be, "or

not to be" in the case of Buddhism.

Furthermore, Buddhist notions of rebirth have few compatible features on the

specifics; particularly the effects upon the physical stratum - as soul nature does in

Plato. In this respect, Plato’s theory of reincarnation is crucially different, inasmuch

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as it is soul which causes the body around it to be assembled in a particular way.

Thus, this process is dependent upon soul nature, and the restrictive action of

necessity inherent within the physical stratum. The precise process is open to debate,

but in the Laws (904a-d), soul appears to move elementary particles in such a

manner as to fashion bodies appropriate to their natures. Indeed, the earlier Timaeus

suggests that soul attracts the physical elements "around it", rather as a sea creature

might attract a crustacean. Here what is clear is that, whatever the dynamics of the

process, matter is caused to be by soul, and it is this which initiates the process. So

too, the process cannot be without the causal influence of soul; both on a cosmic, and

an individual level. Indeed, the process is a process of the soul itself as a principle of

life and motion.

First, matter is ordered in the most part by the motive, active, Demiurgic principle

which is Soul, who "desires that all things be as good as much as possible". On an

individual level, it also perhaps forms the physical body to be as it is. In this, the

cause is soul, which in essence must remain divine, and forms a body, rather than

entering it, due to the principle of "attraction". The precise process of soul is left

vague, expressed as it is in the context of a poetic, non- dialogical, mythical

monologue. Yet the point here is that this type of causal effect upon matter,

indispensable for Plato's process of rebirth and indicative of a given soul's nature, is

one lacking in the Buddhist process: a belief where a continuity of life is best termed

‘rebirth’, which occurs without any permanent notion of an immortal soul as an

explanatory cause for existence. Yet the Platonic notion of palingenesia requires

bona fide that psuche as an eternal primal cause must exist for the process, and it is

this that effects matter, and is in turn affected by its embodiment and incarnated

actions.

It is difficult, therefore, to square the processes of both philosophies, when Plato's is

clearly dependent on a psychic cause for the process to be, a cause which supposes

the existence of a divine immortal principle, whilst the basis of Buddhism centres on

a "no soul" philosophical response with a doctrine of anatta: a process which

crucially denies the existence of such an enduring principle for process. This too is

further pre-emptied by the whole notion of sunnyata, or the doctrine of emptiness, a

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belief that seeks to explain being, and the true underlying nature of the apparent

personality complex.

Similarities, if they have to be drawn at all with India, might have been more

fruitfully made between palingenesia and the Hindu notion of reincarnation of the

atman, rather than Buddhist punabbhava, but such comparisons do not sit happily

with the non-dualist/dualist debate; where the question is whether the "spirit" within

each living entity is fully identical with the cosmic principle, or whether it is to be

differentiated from the individual atman in living beings. A debate which Plato

alludes to, with his notions of a mortal and immortal tripartite soul complex, but

makes no specific argument for either way with a direct dialectic debate.

Specifically, in the case of Buddhism, anatta arose as a direct critical response to

Hindu belief systems of an atman, and the Vedanta and Advaitan traditions- the kind

of arguments lacking in Plato. Comparisons even with other Greek ideas, such as the

transmigration of souls (metempsychosis), more fitted to Pythagoreanism and later

schools, do not sit happily with Plato's views on specifics; for his view does not view

soul as simply entering a physical shell to which it is most suited, but views it as

constituting a body of elements based on its predominant characteristics from the

previous life. These determine the propensity of other faculties of soul or souls to

exert an influence on personality and behaviour. The underlying causative principle

by its nature, crucially however, must remain essentially divine.

As has already been noted in the introduction, Spencer's syncretic approach makes

no allowance for the differences and evolution of religious belief, the critical

responses which arise within a particular culture, nor does he consider the clear

differences on detail or the timeline sufficiently. But he also does not make much of

the clear differences between the final goal in Plato, his productive use of eros (which

the soul uses to apprehend the Beautiful in the Symposium) and the distinct practise

required to attain nibbana. He simply attempts to set up the suggestion that whilst

nibbana is a "cessation of", or a "blowing out" of desire, which is the basis and the

cause of our suffering, the attainment of the end goal of nibbana requires

paradoxically that we desire the goal which is good. This arm of the paradox is, he

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considers, therefore consistent with Plato, and the aspiration generally for lovers of

wisdom, who seek to achieve an understanding of the eidetic summum bonum.

Similarities arise in this respect, as Plato’s psuche no longer needs to desire the

object once it achieves the object of its apprehension as the end goal. In the

Symposium this might well entail an end. Yet, in Buddhism, even nibbana is

relinquished in the Diamond Sutra, in order to progress to "islands beyond this

island" of nibbana, which is beyond death and decay.

Crucially here the desire for nibbana is actually an impediment to the attainment of

the goal. It would perhaps be an error, therefore, to presume that the goal of nibbana

is in itself a desire for that which is good, or even that it is a good desire. Desires,

even the desire for nibbana, is a cause of suffering, or an impediment to the

concentration achieved by samadhi, and the subsequent progression to nibbana. It is

here that non- attachment (nekkhamma) crucially plays its part in progression.

In the Phaedo, there is the need for renunciation of the body, which causes wicked

desires to arise, but there are also good desires associated with the soul/body

complex, which overcome the wicked desires that arise from the soul being trapped

by the body’s fetters. Here, the desire to apprehend the Forms is a desire which is

clearly considered to be divine and good, and a prime reflex of the soul. Yet the clear

difference in the Phaedo, as opposed to Buddhism, is that desire itself is considered

not an impediment, but the attainment to such a goal; if it arises as a natural love for

philosophy, which is the good, right and natural desire of the soul.

In the Symposium, and Phaedrus, the desire to engage enthusiastically in

philosophy, utilises eros as a positive force for liberation. It is the basis for a dialectic

progression. Crucially here, this erotic force is not the cause of suffering; for it is in

essence divine, and it is the material substratum which causes this force to become

disorientated from its true purpose which causes desire to be subverted to suffering.

In Buddhism, however, the craving itself is the chief cause of suffering, and

irrespective of a categorisation of good or bad desires which arise, this in itself is an

impediment to the goal which is nibbana. Nibbana is here literally to be translated as

"the extinction" or "the blowing out" of desires or cravings. Whereas the Platonic

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experience of the Beautiful is the summum bonum achieved by the dialectic of eros.

Generally speaking, in Buddhism, a case could be made that there can be no true

attainment of nibbana whilst there is desire, even if it be a good desire for nibbana.

Whereas desire cannot be relinquished in Plato until the Beautiful is actually

attained.