Among the most prominent, complex, and controversial elements of Buddhism are its views of the afterlife: that we’ve all gone through uncountable cycles of birth and rebirth and will continue to do so until we overcome the delusions that keep us tied to this wheel of recurrence, called samsara, and are released.
In his new book, Rebirth: A Guide to Mind, Karma, and Cosmos in the Buddhist World (Shambhala Publications, 2022), Roger Jackson—John Nason Professor of Asian Studies, emeritus—traces the evolution of these ideas, along with the related concept of karma, through three millennia; from the pre-Buddhist wisdom texts known as the Upanishads through the time of the Buddha (mid–first millennium BCE) until today.
A mainstay of Buddhist study and practice at Carleton for more than three decades (see “Buddhism on the Brain” in this issue), Jackson traces complex philosophical and eschatological developments—and disagreements about them—with such engaging clarity that the book’s detailed scholarship feels downright buoyant. Of particular interest to Western Buddhists will be his chapter on how today’s thinkers and practitioners deal with ancient, recondite ideas: accepting them fully; reframing them in contemporary, often semi-scientific ways; recasting them in symbolic terms; or sidelining them altogether.
The range here recalls how contemporary thinkers deal with the “difficult-to-believe” element in other faiths, including Christianity, and reminds readers that Buddhism itself is undergoing many rebirths as it engages with modernity.